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MORAL LEADERSHIP 

AND OTHER SERMONS 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

AND OTHER SERMONS 



BY 

LEIGHTON PARKS 

RECTOR OF ST. B ABTHOLOMEw's CHURCH, NEW YORK 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

MCMXIV 



Copyright, 1914, bt 
LEIGHTON PARKS 



oX 



FEB 26 1914 



^CI.A369153 
/ 



So 

THE CONGREGATION 

OF 

ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH, NEW YORK 

THESE SERMONS ARE 
GRATEFULLY AND RESPECTFULLY 
DEDICATED 



PREFACE 



To-day brings to a close ten years of a 
happy ministry as Rector of St. Barthol- 
omew's Church, and I thought I might 
be permitted to commemorate it by 
gathering together ten sermons — the 
same number as the years. Which to 
choose of the hundreds I have preached 
was a task I did not care to undertake. 
The simplest way seemed the best. The 
ten last sermons I have preached are here 
printed. With the exception of the last, 
all are from the stenographic notes made 
at the time of their delivery. They lack 
the literary finish that the printed page 
presupposes, but it may be that in this 
rough form they will accomplish their 
purpose — serve as a memorial of plain 
speech from a loving heart. 

L. P. 

St. Bartholomew's Rectory, 
February 1st, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Maranatha 1 

December 7, 1913 

II. Moral Leadership 17 

December 14, 1913 

III. Moral Responsibility 37 

December 21, 1913 

IV. Moral Privilege 59 

December 28, 1913 

V. God's Christmas Gift 87 

Christmas Day, 1913 

VI. Expectation 97 

January 4, 1914 

VII. The Inn 113 

January 11, 1914 

Vni. The Abandoned Farm 135 

January 18, 1914 

IX. Election 151 

January 26, 1914 

X. The Church in the House 169 

February 1, 1914 



I 



MARANATHA 

"Maran-atha."— I Cor. 16 : 22. 

Something like the thrill which the 
geologist experiences when he uncovers 
the strata in which is embedded the fossil 
of animal or plant long extinct, or the 
more familiar experience that some of 
you here have had when walking in Rome 
along the Via Sacra you said to yourself, 
''On these very stones where I stand 
tribunes and consuls, emperors and con- 
querors, martyrs and apostles have trod," 
the student of the Bible feels when, turn- 
ing over the familiar pages, he comes upon 
this mysterious word "Maranatha." 

The punctuation of our King James 
version has obscured the meaning of the 
word. It is a part of a text: "If any 
[ 1 ] 



MARANATHA 

man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let 
him be Anathema, Maranatha." We 
have assumed that Maranatha simply 
adds to the force of the mysterious curse 
"Anathema," but it has nothing to do 
with it. The verse should read : '*If any 
man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let 
him be accursed (leave him to his fate).* 
Maran-atha." 

It is an Aramaic word, a part of that 
dialect or patois which our Saviour spoke, 
and is one of the few words contained in 
the Greek New Testament that show us 
what that speech was. They who ought 
to know tell us that this was the word 
the early Christians in Palestine spoke 
to one another at the end of the Lord's 
Supper. So just as the word '*Mass" 
spread all over the mediaeval world as 
the title of the Communion Service, in the 
Palestinian Churches of old the Commun- 
ion might have been called the *'Maran- 

* See Rev. 22 : 11. 
[ 2 ] 



MARANATHA 

atha." The word means: "Our Lord 
is near.'* It is the key to the Bible. 
From the very beginning, in the story of 
Eden, when the Lord God walked in the 
garden in the cool of the evening, until 
the Book of Revelation, where the soul 
is asked to sit down at a supper with God, 
there is the revelation of the nearness of 
God to man. 

So I would ask you this morning to 
think with me for a little while of the in- 
fluence of that great thought upon Paul, 
and the men and women to whom he 
wrote his letters. Of course this nearness 
of the Lord took a form which you and I 
cannot appreciate to-day. The immedi- 
ate expectation, on the part of the early 
Christians, of the passing away of all the 
things that are seen, the sun and moon 
and stars and earth, and then the reap- 
pearance in physical form of Jesus, who 
had walked the hills of Galilee, led them 
to say to themselves, "He may come 
[ 3 ] 



MARANATHA 

to-day." "Our Lord is near." Without 
that divine illusion I do not see how they 
could have lived. It was because they 
thought that any day the end would come 
that their thought of life and time and the 
experiences of life was changed. 

First of all their thought of what we 
call the world; it has a great hold upon 
us, it seems to us that the things we see, 
from the familiar furniture of the room 
to the pyramids of history, must be the 
real things. The things we hear, from 
the child's prattle to the sublimest sym- 
phony; the things we touch, from our 
own bodies to the sun and moon and 
stars which we now can weigh — these seem 
to us the real things, and that is what 
they seemed to Paul and the men and 
women to whom he wrote, until they be- 
gan to say to themselves, "Maranatha." 
Then, with that expectation of the imme- 
diate passing away of all the things that 
the senses apprehend, they could never 
[ 4 ] 



MARANATHA 

feel about them as they once had felt, as 
you and I feel; no more could they seem 
the real things. The real thing is life, 
and not the things that surround life. 

And this was not merely a vague feel- 
ing about the things that they touched 
and saw — it entered into the deepest ex- 
perience of their lives and affected their 
value of property. Paul says in one of his 
letters: "I know how to be rich (that is, 
I have been in my day rich), I know how 
to be poor. It is an indifferent thing 
whether I am rich or poor. I used to 
think that life consisted in the abundance 
of the things that a man possesses. I now 
know that it has nothing to do with the 
things that he possesses. I experience, 
and you men and women to whom I write 
experience, life and joy and hope; can the 
richest man in Corinth have more than 
that? The poorest man in Corinth may 
have these things;" therefore the things 
that seem to us so important were not 
[ 5 ] 



MARANATHA 

important to them. They had only a 
secondary value. They had learned, be- 
cause of the nearness of their Lord, to 
seek the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness first, sure that God would give 
them what he knew they needed for the 
little time that remained. They only 
prayed for bread for "to-day'* or ''to- 
morrow." 

The second thing that this faith pro- 
duced in these men and women was this: 
they came to understand the meaning of 
pleasure and pain. The history of the 
world might be written on those two 
words, pleasure and pain. As soon as the 
animal life appeared on earth we see it 
first searching here for the luscious food 
and the refreshing drink and the satis- 
faction of all the animal appetites, and 
then turning, rushing away, because out of 
the dark jungle some enemy approached. 
Running after pleasure, fleeing from pain 
is the natural life of man. It is the life 
[6] 



MARANATHA 

of many men and women in this city 
to-day. We all have known it. Paul 
was lifted far above it all. He did not 
look on pain as the Stoic did, saying to 
himself: ''I can endure all the gods can 
send and from my quivering lips they will 
never wring a cry." No, not at all; the 
man suffered from an incurable disease. 
He had before him a great work to which 
he felt he had been called by God. The 
awful pain that he endured hindered him 
from accomplishing this work, and in 
agony and sweat he prayed God to save 
him from it, and God would not answer 
his prayer. "Then," said Paul, "I came 
to understand the meaning of that pain. 
I besought the Lord that it might depart 
from me, but he said to me, 'My grace, 
my strength, my peace, my joy, my love 
is all you need, and in your pain and in 
your weakness the power and glory of 
God may be seen.' Then," says Paul, 
"I am glad I am in pain, I am glad I 
[ 7 ] 



MARANATHA 

suffer, if by suffering the glory of my God 
can be revealed in my life." You have 
known men and women who have gone 
through that experience, who have prayed 
to be relieved of their sickness and suffer- 
ing, and then have known that patience 
and cheerfulness and sweetness and un- 
selfishness, which came in and through 
the pain, were better than any of the 
pleasures of life. 

And the last thing that this great faith 
did for these men and women was to 
change their conception of death. The 
world had been dominated by its fear of 
death ; the spirit had been broken by the 
certainty of death. Now Paul said: "It 
is an insignificant thing when all is said." 
You cannot turn over any one of the 
Epistles without seeing how differently 
those men and women thought about 
death from the way in which we at least 
are tempted to think of it. All along 
there had been in humanity a vague hope 
[ 8 ] 



MARANATHA 

that somehow it was not the end. Like 
the words of Lear when he thinks Cor- 
delia is not really dead: 

"She lives ! if it be so, 
It is a chance that does redeem all sorrows 
That ever I have felt."* 

But with Paul there was no "if," there 
was no "chance." Jesus Christ was the 
revelation of the everlasting yea of God. 
The Son of God can no more die than 
God can die. Those who are one with 
the Son of God can never die, and what 
Paul was preaching all along the shore of 
the Mediterranean Sea was at last em- 
bodied in that sublime Gospel of John at 
Ephesus, seventy years perhaps after the 
death of our Saviour. In the great story 
of Lazarus' death and Jesus' communion 
with his stricken sisters, John embodied 
the great thought into which the Church 
at last had entered. " Lord, if thou hadst 

* "King Lear," Act V, Scene HI. 
[9] 



MARANATHA 

been here my brother had not died." 
How pathetic is that lament which must 
have been repeated by hundreds who had 
heard of Jesus' mighty works. "If he 
still walked this earth, the brother, the 
sister, the mother, wife, or child would 
not have died." But every Lord's Supper 
said, '''Maran-atha,'" Our Lord is near. 
They have not died — He who is near is 
the resurrection and the life. ' ' Whosoever 
belie veth in him can never die." They 
had a privilege that Martha and Mary 
never had. In that day there must have 
been times when he could not be with 
them; now he is near every stricken life. 

Now let us ask ourselves what was the 
ground of their faith? Sometimes it is 
thought that it was the continuation of 
the influence that had gone out from 
Jesus' earthly life, and that they had a 
great advantage over us because they 
were nearer to Palestine than we are. 
But they were not. Really you and I 
[ 10 1 



MARANATHA 

are nearer to the earthly life of Jesus than 
were these men and women in Corinth 
centuries ago. We know more about the 
country than they did; we know more 
about the details of Jesus' life than they 
did; we know more about the conditions 
under which He lived and worked than 
they did — we really are nearer to Him 
than they were. 

Or we say: "It was this illusion, this 
expectation of the passing away of all 
things and the coming of Christ and the 
snatching up in the air of those who still 
lived, to be with Christ, that gave them 
their faith." Not at all; that is to mis- 
read the whole story. The form their 
faith took was inevitable, and you and I 
cannot reproduce it nor enter into that 
atmosphere, nor is it necessary; because 
you and I have a larger and a deeper 
thought of the coming of Christ than 
those men and women had of old, because 
we know that it is no physical reappear- 
[ 11 ] 



.J 



MARANATHA 

ance — it is the recurring consciousness of 
a spiritual presence that stands near us 
and is our dearest friend. 

No, it was no accident of time or place, 
it was no confusion about the meaning of 
the world. Their faith was based on a 
living, daily experience. 

They thought. They stopped drifting 
and thought about the meaning of life, 
and as they thought they had an experi- 
ence that almost every man and woman 
has had, perhaps over and over again. 
Husband and wife, parent and child, 
lovers and friends, — you sit and think 
deeply of something and the one nearest 
to you suddenly speaks and anticipates 
the word you were about to speak. Who 
has not had that experience.^ Who has 
not had it over and over again? Some- 
thing like this was the experience of these 
men and women. They thought about 
the meaning of life, and it was as if some 
one standing beside them spoke and in- 
[ 12 I 



MARANATHA 

terpreted Kfe to them, so that, with no 
boasting but in the simplest way imagina- 
ble, they began to say: "We have the 
mind of Christ. He is so near that we 
know what He thinks of life and death, 
and what He thinks we think." 

They prayed^ and here in joy they 
passed beyond the experience of him who 
is preaching, and of many of you who 
hear. And yet there is something in that 
experience that even the simplest and the 
most commonplace amongst us may know. 
We cannot express it in the great words 
that Paul used, nor would Paul use those 
words if he were alive to-day. He said: 
W^e know not how to pray, but the spirit 
helpeth our infirmities, making interces- 
sion for us with groanings that cannot 
be uttered, and the prayer of the spirit 
which we feel hut cannot formulate, God 
hears and grants because it is 'according 
to the will of God.' " 

I say that few can enter into the mean- 
[ 13 ] 



MARANATHA 

ing of that deep experience, and yet there 
is something in it that every one who has 
ever earnestly prayed knows. The prayer 
may have begun with a definite, earnest 
petition for some particular thing, an in- 
dividual private prayer, and in the pray- 
ing we have felt ourselves borne along 
and upward into a great longing for the 
fulfilment of the will of God. let 
that be done no matter what happens to 
me" — this is the universal spiritual prayer; 
it becomes your prayer, because the Lord 
is the Spirit and He has been near you, 
as He was near Paul. 

And lastly, they lived and showed their 
love by sitting down together, rich and 
poor, old and young, wise and foolish, at 
God's table and found that Christ fed 
them and Christ refreshed them. They 
came away from that Love Feast know- 
ing that the Lord had been near. No 
wonder that they ended the solemn serv- 
ice with *'Maran-atha." It is the secret 
[ 14 ] 



MARANATHA 

of life. God grant that according to our 
needs and in and through our daily experi- 
ence of pain and in the affairs of life, 
in thought, in prayer, in love, and in 
death, you and I may be lifted into that 
atmosphere of life and joy and peace 
which can only be because our Lord is 
near. 



[ 15 ] 



II 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

"He breathed on them, and saith unto them. Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye re- 
mit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever 
sins ye retain, they are retained." — St. John 20:22-23. 

It was my privilege last Sunday to speak 
to some of you of what is called the mys- 
tic aspect of the religion of Jesus, — the 
communion of the soul with God. I 
know that there are some of you here to 
whom such an appeal meant more than 
it could mean to your preacher, but there 
were no doubt some to whom it meant 
very little. They say: "We are not 
mystics, and when the religion of Jesus 
is placed before us as a mystical experi- 
ence there is no response in mind or 
heart." Well, let it be so. We cannot 
all be poets, we cannot all be scholars, we 
[ 17] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

cannot all be philosophers, but we can all 
be good men and women, and so to-day I 
want to speak to you of the ethical aspect 
of rehgion. I take my text from the 
Gospel of John, the 20th chapter at the 
23d verse. "And he breathed on them 
and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost; Whose soever sins ye remit, they 
are remitted unto them; and whose soever 
sins ye retain, they are retained." 

First, to whom were these words 
spoken? The Greek Church, the Roman 
CathoUc Church, a very large number of 
clergy and laity in our own Church say: 
"These words were spoken to the Apostles 
and Christ was giving to them the official 
power to forgive sins and to bind sins upon 
the human conscience. A power which 
they, in their turn, transmitted to their 
successors in office." Two things I will 
remark. Thomas was not present, there- 
fore, according to this theory Thomas 
seems to have been excluded from the 

[ 18 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

Apostolic gift. But there is another ques- 
tion, the question that men and women 
are asking about everything to-day. Does 
it work.f^ Has it been found that in those 
countries where that theory held sway 
the moral life has been nobler and holier 
than in those countries where that theory 
was utterly repudiated.^ 

As I understand it, and as many good 
men and women understand it, this was 
not a power given to the ten Apostles 
alone who were present. It is said dis- 
tinctly that it was given when the dis- 
ciples were assembled together — disciples, 
men and women, the Church. It was the 
revelation of the moral leadership of 
Christ's Church that was being declared 
in these words of the risen Lord. The 
moral leadership of the Christian Church, 
so that the Church should be able to lift 
off of men the burden of sin and the 
Church should be able to bind the heavy 
burden of sin upon men's consciences un- 
[ 19 1 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

til they cried out for the rehef of the 
living God. 

Before we come to consider what this 
means in our own day, in this city, in this 
congregation, I think we should do well 
to recall what it meant to the Church in 
the past. That I think might help to an 
understanding of the Church's present 
duty and privilege. 

There are two great moments in the 
history of the Christian Church when the 
consciousness of this great power, the re- 
sult of breathing in the Spirit of God, 
manifested itself in the life of the Church. 
The first was in what we call the con- 
version of the Roman Empire. And of 
course that does not mean what the later 
conversions of some of the Germanic 
tribes meant — the mere baptism and 
change of name of those people so that 
whereas heretofore they had been called 
Heathen or Arian, now they were called 
Christians or Catholics. Not at all. The 
[ 20 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

conversion of the Roman Empire means 
the conversion of the moral ideal, and the 
change in the moral life of the men and 
women who lived in the great cities and 
towns and on the scattered farms of the 
Roman Empire. 

Of course there is always the danger 
that besets the controversialist, to paint 
his opponent in too black colors, and per- 
haps this has been done. Therefore, I 
will avoid all temptation to exaggerate 
the state of the case morally before the 
disciples of Jesus Christ began to go 
through the great cities and the villages 
and tell their story of the ideal life that 
they had seen and touched and handled 
and knew — showing that they were near 
to God. 

What sort of a life was it these peo- 
ple to whom they went were living .^^ 
Well, take from your library shelf this 
afternoon Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire," and read over that 
[ 21 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

great 15th chapter. Disregard the cyni- 
cism, and overlook the fat complacency 
and remember that you are hearing a pre- 
judiced witness, a man who neither un- 
derstood the Christian Church nor loved 
it, but did love to tell the truth, and had 
a knowledge of that ancient time that 
probably has never been surpassed, per- 
haps never equalled. Read what that 
man unwillingly admits was the result of 
the spreading of the Christian influence 
over that great empire — how the lives of 
multitudes of men and women were 
changed by this thing. For, as he sneer- 
ingly remarks, the greatest advances at 
first were made among the vilest people, 
some of whom had been murderers and 
escaped the executioner, many of whom 
had been prostitutes on the streets of the 
great cities; some of whom were thieves, 
others adulterers. 

Or listen to another witness, not hostile 
as is Gibbon, but certainly not prejudiced. 
[ 22 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

Lecky, in the 3rd chapter of his great 
work on European Morals, says: *'The 
chief cause of its (Christianity's) success 
was the congruity of its teaching with the 
spiritual nature of mankind. It was be- 
cause it was true to the moral sentiments 
of the age, because it represented faith- 
fully the supreme type of excellence to 
which men were then tending, because it 
corresponded with their religious wants, 
aims, and emotions, because the whole 
spiritual being could then expand and 
expatiate under its influence, that it 
planted its roots so deeply in the hearts 
of men. One great cause of its success 
was that it produced more heroic actions 
and formed more upright men than any 
other creed." 

There was no vile life in the cities of 
Corinth, of Ephesus, or Alexandria, or of 
Rome to whom the disciples who had re- 
ceived the Holy Spirit did not go and de- 
clare that by the grace of God every sin 
[ 23 1 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

could be forgiven, and a man could start 
afresh, and a woman who had been down 
in the mire of the city might walk with 
uplifted face in the glory of God. What a 
revelation ! What a tremendous message 
this was, and they believed it because it 
answered to the deepest longings of their 
spiritual nature, and thus became our 
spiritual ancestors. The Church forgave 
their sins and brought them to baptism, 
and said: *'This outward and visible sign 
of washing witnesses to an inward reality. 
God's Spirit will heal your poor, sick, 
shameful, defiled soul, and it will stand 
up in the new life revealed by God." 

This went on in every city and in every 
hamlet, and wherever the messengers of 
the Church came. But in addition to 
these evident sins which all men condemn, 
which the philosophers condemned as well 
as the Apostles, but had no suggestion as 
to how they were to be left behind and a 
new Ufe begun, 1 say in addition to these 
[ 24 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

there were other sins that lay heavy on 
the consciences of men and women who 
had not sunk into the degradation of 
which I have been speaking. For in- 
stance, it is difficult for you and me to 
imagine it, but it was a real difficulty to 
the Jew who felt the beauty and the power 
of the life of Jesus, and desired to become 
his disciple. Instantly he was beset by 
a difficulty that was ingrained in his re- 
ligious nature — the eating of meat that 
had been offered to idols. It was the cus- 
tom in the market to offer a certain por- 
tion of the meat that was brought in from 
the country to an idol, and the Jew came 
there to buy that meat; or the Jew went 
to a dinner party and he did not know 
but what the meat that was set before 
him had been contaminated by being 
offered to an idol. To you and me it 
seems an imaginary sin — it was a very 
real one to the Jew, and the Christian 
Church lifted it off his conscience and said 
[25] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

to him: "You are a free man because 
you are a brother of the Son of man, and 
he has shown that there is nothing com- 
mon or unclean. You have no reason 
to fear because the meat has been offered 
to an idol." 

And then there were the sins that lay- 
on the conscience of the Heathen. They 
said to themselves: ''It is all very well 
for these people who live in cities, but 
for us Pagans, country people, who are 
ever near to Nature, it is a serious matter 
if we neglect the gods. The rising river 
will overflow the farm, the earthquake 
will destroy our little hamlet, the sudden 
burst of hail in the summer time will ruin 
the harvest. There are many who say 
that these things come because we no 
longer sacrifice to the old gods." And 
the Church went amongst those people 
preaching the unity of God, laying the 
foundation (though they little guessed 
it, and little cared) of all the modern sci- 
[26] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

entific conception of this universe as a 
place of order which no demons can inter- 
fere with. The sin, that is, the sense of 
sin, lying heavy on the conscience because 
the idols had been neglected, with its con- 
sequent fear of the hatred of the gods, was 
gradually lifted by the Christian Church. 

Now in addition to this remission of 
sins they bound sins upon people. There 
were many things that respectable men 
and women were doing, and their con- 
science did not trouble them at all, but 
the Church made their conscience trouble 
them, and that is the meaning of the bind- 
ing of sin. Neither the Church nor any 
other organization can, since we have 
the Gospels in our hands, put arbitrary 
sins upon you and me, but the Church can 
and did in the past, and may in the future, 
reveal to your conscience and mine that 
which heretofore we have never thought 
of as a sin. For instance, one of the most 
terrible things in the social life of the 
[ 27 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

latter days of the Empire was the disgust 
with children. They were a nuisance. 
They were a weariness, and the girls were 
simply an expense and a danger.* And 
therefore all over that Empire children, 
and above all girl babies, were exposed to 
the elements, to the wild beasts, to die, 
and apparently nobody's conscience was 
troubled. If the mother felt the maternal 
pang as the infant, that she never should 
see again, was drawn from her breast, 
nobody paid any attention to that. 
There was no conscience that objected till 
Christian men and women came and said: 
"But that little child belongs to God," 
and they baptized it. They baptized in- 
fants wherever they found them. They 
put the sign of the cross on them, they 

* As these words were spoken, a little girl who had 
taken off her hat and leaned her head against her 
father's breast, encircled by his arm, looked up at him 
with a smile as much as to say: "Did you ever hear 
anything as silly as that?" I saw an illustration of a 
new life. Children had once been endured, now they 
are adored. 

[ 28 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

branded them as a part of Christ's flock, 
and slowly it came to pass that men and 
women said to themselves, ''This thing is 
a sin," and it ceased. 

Another thing they did and nobody 
thought it was a sin — to hold slaves. No- 
body thought it was a sin if the slave ran 
away and his master was convinced that 
he no longer could get any more work out 
of him if the master killed the slave — the 
way you sometimes feel about a horse that 
has run away — you are at liberty to kill 
him. 

The Church did not begin a social revo- 
lution and attempt to overthrow the 
whole structure that was built on slavery, 
but they asked the master and his slave 
to sit down together at the Table while 
somebody served, and they told them that 
the unseen servant was J esus Christ. And 
from that day slowly, very slowly, the sin 
of slavery, the holding of the brother in 
bondage came to be felt to be wrong- 
[ 29 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

The Church bound that upon the con- 
science of the world. 

And the same thing took place in the 
gladiatorial shows. Why, when a coun- 
try had been conquered and strong men 
had been taken captive, should they not 
be taken to Rome, to the Colosseum, to 
be devoured by wild beasts, while the 
elite of Rome drank the blood of the beast 
and the man with shrieks of delight? The 
Church said: "There is no such thing as 
Barbarian or Scythian — we are all one 
in Jesus Christ." And, just as once no 
one would have thrown a Roman citizen 
into the arena just because he belonged 
to the Eternal City, so the day came when 
no one would throw any man or woman 
to the lions because they belonged to the 
City of God. It was very slow, but it was 
very sure. They forgave sins and they 
bound sins — they were the moral leaders 
of the world. 

The second great moment of which I 
[30] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

would speak is what is known as the 
Reformation in the sixteenth century. 
Then the same thing went on. In the 
first place the Church, that part of it 
which had begun to receive the Spirit of 
Christ, began to forgive sins. The whole 
machinery of pardon had broken down. 
Men and women had been doing every- 
thing that the priesthood said they ought 
to do, and as a result they had lost their 
money and had gotten no peace of con- 
science. Conscience would not let them 
alone, and they began to ask themselves; 
*'Why is it that when I have done every- 
thing that I have been told to do I cannot 
find peace to my soul.'^" 

And the men and women who had re- 
ceived the Spirit of Christ in the sixteenth 
century, said, the reason is this: "You 
haven't enough to pay God for what you 
have done, but God in His infinite love 
has paid for you. You are as foolish as 
the workman who week by week brings 
[ 31 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

up his penny to pay the debt he can never 
pay, and then finds that it has been paid 
by him to whom it was due. The Cross 
of Christ," said these men, ''is the witness 
that the debt, whatever it is, has been 
paid. No one of you could pay it, no one 
of you need try to pay it. All you need 
to do is to receive God's assurance that 
the debt is cancelled, and that now you 
can live with a free conscience as His 
child, trying to do the will of God." 
That lifted the burden of sin off the con- 
sciences of multitudes, and they began 
life all over again. 

Then, in addition to this one particular 
forgiving of sins (and I cannot speak of 
many others because of want of time), let 
us think of other sins the Church lifted off 
the consciences of men and women. First, 
it lifted off the sin of marriage. The 
Church had been saying, or rather the 
officials had been saying, for centuries, 
that marriage was a mere concession to the 
[ 32 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

animal life, and that the noblest spiritual 
life was free from all family ties. Now 
came these men and women, who had 
received the Spirit of Christ in the six- 
teenth century, and said: *'The hohest 
life on earth is the life of a pure man and 
a pure woman in marriage." 

They hfted off the conscience the sin of 
marriage, and revealed marriage as God's 
appointed way for the fulfilment and 
sanctification of human Kfe. The holy 
family took the place of the sexless priest. 

They hfted from the conscience the sin 
of reading the Bible. It is true that many 
more Bibles were distributed before the 
Reformation than w^e used to think. It 
is true that a good many people were read- 
ing the Bible before the Reformation; but 
this is also true: that the officials of the 
Church were opposed to any reading of 
the Bible except under the direction of 
the priest. The Reformers lifted the ban 
and said: "Read your Bible for yourself 
[ 33 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

when and where you will, and God will 
reveal Himself unto you plain men and 
women just as He revealed Himself to the 
men and women who wrote the book." 
Need I go on? I have only begun to 
touch the fringe of this subject, and yet 
here we must leave it. The Church, when 
it has been filled with the Spirit of Jesus 
Christ, has felt first of all the moral re- 
sponsibihty for the conditions of the 
world in which it Uves; and secondly: the 
Church, when it has been filled with the 
Spirit of Jesus Christ, has had a sublime 
faith in the response of human nature to 
the revelation of the Divine Life. 

I have been speaking all along of what 
the Church" has done. This includes 
various activities and many agencies. It 
might be by a council as at Jerusalem, or 
by the prince of the Apostles, Peter, or the 
"least of the Apostles," Paul, or by 
Bishops or Doctors or Preachers or 
EvangeUsts — but the real though unseen 
[ 34 ] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 

work of forgiveness and condemnation 
was the work of obscure men and women. 
This was true in the conversion of the 
Empire, and in the Reformation. The 
great mountain peaks hfted high above 
the plain are named and honored, but it is 
the mountain range that forms the water- 
shed and affects the cUmate. It is the 
Church, the whole company of Christian 
people who change the world's atmos- 
phere in any age. It is to them we must 
turn to-day. 



[35] 



Ill 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

"Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are re- 
tained."— St. John 20 : 23. 

It was my privilege to speak to you last 
Sunday of these same words, and we 
thought of the way in which the Church 
had realized the moral leadership of the 
world, first in the forgiving and secondly 
in the binding of sins upon men's con- 
sciences in the great moment called the 
conversion of the Roman Empire. In the 
sixteenth century also we saw how godly 
men and women lifted off of the con- 
sciences of men and women the burden 
of sin which the officials of the Church 
had bound upon them. But time did not 
permit us to go on and think of the way 
[ 37 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

in which those same men and women 
bound heavily the burden of sin upon the 
Church, which led to the reformation of 
the Roman Catholic Church itself. 

To-day I want to remind you, first of 
all, that those two great moments do not 
exhaust the experience of the Church. 
There has never been a generation where 
this work has not been called for, and 
there never has been a generation where 
this work has not been done by the Church. 
In the first generation of Christians it was 
done ofl&cially by the Council of Jeru- 
salem, which lifted a burden from con- 
science and laid a burden upon conscience. 
In the twelfth century it was done by 
St. Francis, the great layman, the great 
absolver of sin, — the man who also laid the 
burden of godless riches and enervating 
luxury so heavy upon the conscience that 
men and women could no longer bear it. 
It was done again in the eighteenth cen- 
tury by John Wesley, when he hfted off 
[ 38 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

the burden of great and heavy sins, and 
laid again the burden of sins upon the 
consciences of others who thought them- 
selves righteous. It has been done in 
the nineteenth century by the Salvation 
Army. There has never been a genera- 
tion that has been without it. 

Now this morning we want to ask our- 
selves, what is the need of it now? And 
if we followed the logical order we should 
consider first what are the sins that the 
Church ought to lift off the consciences 
of men, and secondly, what are the sins 
that the Church ought to bind upon them. 
But I have thought it best to leave to next 
Sunday the consideration of what sins we 
ought to try to lift, and to ask you to 
think with me this morning about some 
sins that we ought to try to bind. And as 
much as I dislike to do it, I intend to talk 
to you about a question everybody is talk- 
ing and reading about, everybody is flock- 
ing to see represented upon the stage — I 
[ 39 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

mean the sex relation of men and women. 

Twenty years ago I said to a man whose 
moral judgment I greatly value: "It 
seems to me that the increasing divorces 
in this country must lead ultimately to 
the dissolution of society." But he said: 
"Not so. The difficulty to-day is not 
that there are too many divorces, but that 
there are too few." I do not think he 
would say that to-day, for there are some 
states in which there is one divorce to 
every twelve marriages, and other states 
where it is asserted (though I am not 
certain, and will not insist upon it) that 
the proportion is even greater. 

Now the first difficulty in dealing with 
this whole matter is that the Church it- 
self is not clear in its judgment. It is not 
clear officially. Individual members, you 
and I who are here, are not clear about it 
because there are so many different things 
that are contained in this one word, 
"divorce," that it is difficult to form a 
[ 40 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

judgment. For instance, take this ease, 
and it can be duplicated, yes and more 
than duphcated, by experiences that some 
of you here this morning know. Here, 
we may say, is a girl who has married a 
man in good faith, and finds that he 
was physically unfit to be married, in- 
temperate, a gambler, he does not support 
her, he abuses her, he calls on her to get 
support from her family, and at last sug- 
gests that there is some other man who 
would provide what is needed. Is there 
any good man or woman who would say 
that she ought to remain under those 
conditions? Is there father or mother 
who would say that the daughter ought to 
submit herself to the wandering lusts of 
such a creature.^ None. Can it be the 
mind of Christ that she should continue 
in that state I believe not. But when 
you ask me to go further and say that 
that being the case the woman is at liberty, 
after the court has relieved her from her 
[ 41 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

legal obligation, to marry again, I find 
myself in conflict with the Church of 
which I am a minister. It says yes, I say 
no. But it is not my purpose to discuss 
that — that is another matter — I merely 
call your attention to it to show that there 
are cases where, in the judgment of all 
good men and women, divorces are justi- 
fiable. 

We will take another case. Here, we 
will say, is a man who has married and 
soon become dissatisfied with his wife. 
He removes to Nevada, he sets up a fic- 
titious residence, he complains to the 
judge that his wife has abandoned him, 
which means that she would not go out 
to the West with him to get a divorce. 
He is set free, he returns here to this com- 
munity and he marries a young woman 
with whom, as the English servants say, 
he ''had been keeping company," and 
then all is as it should be, and nobody is 
to blame! 

[ 42 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

What is to be the end of this thing, my 
friends? For between those two ex- 
tremes of justifiable divorce and fraud 
there are great numbers of cases which 
cannot be put in either category. Di- 
vorce has been made easy, and in my 
judgment, because it has been made easy, 
advantage has been taken of it. Women 
are notobhged now to go so far as Nevada, 
They can go to the State of Maine (be it 
said to the shame of New England) and 
can get a divorce from a man against 
whom they have not one charge to utter. 
They have tired of him and have seen 
some other man that they want to live 
with. Yet these people return here and 
expect to be received as respectable peo- 
ple. What is your opinion on that sub- 
ject? 

Now some one will say: "You will 
never be able to deal with this question 
of divorce until you have first dealt with 
the question of marriage. It is not di- 
[ 43 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

vorce — it is marriage that is the disease." 
This is not a new thing, of course; the 
new thing about it is that while it has been 
uttered by irresponsible and often disrep- 
utable people, it has now been uttered 
by responsible people. If such things are 
published in the muck-raking magazines 
or in the yellow journals, certainly the 
pulpit would not be justified in calling the 
attention of respectable people to them; 
but when we have published in one of the 
representative magazines of this country, 
the Atlantic Monthly, an article by one of 
the leaders of the Feminist Movement, as 
it is called, in England, and when that 
article is reproduced, as I am told it has 
been, in such a paper as the New York 
Times, then it seems to me it is time for 
us to ask ourselves what is our judgment 
upon such utterances. 

What is it that is said? It is said that 
the real trouble with modern life is that 
it has outgrown marriage, that marriage 
[ 44 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

is simply a survival of slavery, and that 
there will never be peace and happiness 
in the family life until it is recognized 
that woman should not be economically 
dependent upon her husband. She must 
be set free to have her own independent 
income, and not be called upon to ask 
her husband whenever she wishes money 
to spend. Until that is reached, say 
these leaders, there can be no peace in the 
family. This is an economical question 
with which I have nothing to do, and I 
will not discuss it. 

I pass to the second point, which is 
this: Marriage is a survival of slavery 
inasmuch as it binds the woman forever 
to one man, and in the nature of the case 
(we will not say in the large majority, but 
in a very large number of cases) that be- 
comes a burden that it is impossible for 
a woman to bear. And what is the solu- 
tion? What is the solution.^ — it is this: 
that instead of two people standing be- 
[ 45 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

fore the altar of God and there solemnly 
promising to take one another "for better, 
for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sick- 
ness and in health, till death parts them," 
the woman shall now he given her true place 
in society y and instead of waiting for a man 
to come and ask her to marry him, shall 
choose a mate temporarily in order that he 
may heget by her a child, and when that 
function has been accomplished, the wom- 
an, being economically independent, will 
continue her life with the child and the 
man will disappear, and of course the 
number of mates will depend upon fancy. 

* See "The Feminist Movement," Atlantic Monthly ^ 
December, 1913. Whoever reads that shocking article 
should also read Mr. E. S. Martin's ironical treat- 
ment of the same subject in the Atlantic Monthly for 
January, 1914, and also the virile pronouncement of 
Professor William T. Sedgwick, professor of biology 
in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the 
New York Times, Sunday, January 18th, 1914. Not a 
few readers will question whether there is the intimate 
connection between the Feminist Movement and 
Women's Suffrage that Professor Sedgwick insists upon. 
But whatever may be the reader's opinion on that sub- 
ject, the biological aspect of the Feminist Movement 
deserves careful consideration. I would especially 

I 46 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

Now what I would ask is this: Have 
any of those people who talk in this 
way, or have you, having read this ar- 
gument, and wondered in your minds 
whether there was anything in it, have 
they ever talked to a woman who had 
tried it? Well, I have, and not to one 
or two. I have talked face to face with 
women who have done just this thing 
only to find that it was a ghastly failure. 
Some one may say: "It is a failure be- 
cause public opinion has not been edu- 
cated to the point where it justifies it. 

recommend to those persons who feel that plain speak- 
ing on such a fundamental subject as sex relation should 
not be made from the pulpit the last paragraph of 
Professor Sedgwick's article: 

"But, meanwhile, where are the Churches? Time 
was when they would have spoken with no uncertain 
sound, but to-day they stand too often dumb, if not 
deaf, before the rising tempest that threatens their 
destruction. The epoch calls for plain speech, for the 
taking of sides, for simple, old-fashioned morality, for 
pure religion and undefiled. Those who are not with 
us in the battle for the conservation of womanhood, of 
home, of family, of morality, and of decency are 
against us, and against those things which make human 
life sweet and really worth living." 

[ 47 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

If that were done then the woman would 
not feel the pressure of public opinion, 
and her conscience would not trouble her." 
Well, that is a fine view of human nature, 
and it shows the deepest insight into cases 
of conscience ! Why, my friends, all that 
public opinion can do in such a case is to 
delay the activity of conscience, and the 
proof of that can be shown, if I were at 
liberty to cite cases, which I am not — 
cases of women who have done this thing, 
and nobody in the community knew it 
but the man and the minister to whom 
she came when the burden became too 
heavy to bear. It was not public opinion 
that has driven such a woman to con- 
fession. What was it? It was this: The 
awakening of the Christian consciousness 
of that woman which has been teaching 
us, through all these centuries since Jesus 
walked the hills of Galilee, that the body 
is a sacrament, and when it is not used 
sacramentally it is sacrilege. The con- 
[ 48 1 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

science awakes to that fact and then 
knows that the door is shut and the life 
of love and peace is lost. 

Some people talk, and some allow them- 
selves to be influenced by such talk, as if 
marriage were slavery. Why, of course 
there are marriages that are slavery, but 
there are unmarried lives that are the 
lives of slaves. I have in mind a girl I 
married eighteen years ago, who has just 
come home from burying her only child. 
How fine it would be if she had chosen a 
temporary mate and now were free to 
choose again! Not so — she is standing 
hand in hand with the man who loves her, 
and together they are waiting for the 
comfort of God. 

What is the Church, what are we to do 
about the state of affairs that exists to-day 
amongst people we know? Well, it is evi- 
dent that the first thing that is necessary 
for a dispassionate judgment is an at- 
mosphere of calm. Now I ask, is that 
[49] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

atmosphere being produced by the read- 
ing of novels, the whole purpose of which 
is to show that conditions are so unfavor- 
able to virtue that it would be miraculous 
if a virtuous life were lived? The novelist 
has all the facts in his or in her hand, and 
they are arranged to suit convenience. 
You and I have no opportunity to cross- 
examine witnesses — we have no oppor- 
tunity to hear the other side. We get 
this one picture, the emotions are greatly 
excited, and we are asked for an immedi- 
ate judgment, and we give it at the next 
lunch party we go to! Now that sort of 
thing is not conducive to a noble, holy, 
moral life. 

Then, on the other hand, we are told: 
"The Church should admit the fact that 
it has lost the moral leadership of the 
world. It has passed to statesmen, to 
journalists, to the stage." We might ask 
about the statesman and the journalist: 
have they separated themselves from the 
[50] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

Church, have they been in no way influ- 
enced by the Church: But let that go. 
In what sense is the stage a moral leader 
of society to-day? The stage is naturally 
and properly a money-making institu- 
tion. If money can be made by the pro- 
duction of the Oberammergau play, and 
some actor of disreputable life seems fitted 
by face or voice to act the part of the 
Christus, he will be cast for that part. No 
doubt there are many actors and actresses 
of unblemished life — there are also many 
of the vilest reputation. Of course we will 
be told that art cannot be trammelled by 
canons of morals. Well, how then can 
art be a moral leader? The art of acting 
presupposes actors, so character will in- 
evitably appear in whatever men or 
women do. If they be not moral they 
cannot be the moral leaders. Moreover, 
how is the "stage" attempting to lead? 
What sort of plays are put upon the stage? 
No doubt many of sweetness and light, 
[ 51 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

but does anybody suppose that a moral 
judgment in regard to this matter is to 
be reached by the representation upon a 
stage of shameful physical disease? Is 
anybody going to be made better from 
hearing these things? Is it not inevitable 
that in the minds of pure-hearted girls 
there shall be planted the seed of sus- 
picion, and instead of that fact which 
everybody knows is a fact being Hmited, 
these girls shall look about in the faces 
of the men they see and wonder if they 
are afflicted with this virus? Or what 
can be the effect upon men or women 
either of the exhibition on the stage of the 
unfortunate victim of lust? Is it not per- 
fectly well known that the effect of those 
things is suggestive, and that a girl who 
goes to the theatre (I am not talking 
about you, you are sheltered in many 
ways) and sees that the dangers are so 
overwhelming is very likely to return and 
say to herself: What is the use of strug- 
[ 52 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

gling? If she could not escape how can 
I?" It lowers the moral atmosphere and 
therefore renders the spiritual nature sus- 
ceptible to the germs of moral disease. 

Some one says: "Yes, that is a very 
old-fashioned way of talking, but you 
ought to know, everybody ought to know, 
that the best way of dealing with vice is 
to represent it as it is, and let people see 
what life is." My answer is that no 
human being dare do it. Is there any 
actor-manager who would dare represent 
on the stage the shameful house, full of 
drunkenness and obscenity and deformity 
and rotten with disease ? Would anybody 
dare represent things as they are? No, 
they represent a purely imaginary picture, 
and you may pay your money and go 
and see that imaginary picture because 
your minds are stirred and your moral 
judgment is not called upon to act. I 
do not wish to weary you, but I want to 
get through with this thing, and there- 
[ 53 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

fore I will impose upon you a little 
longer. 

Not only have we got to deal with this 
question of atmosphere as a preliminary 
to a wise judgment, but we have to re- 
member another thing, and that is the 
effect upon character of motion and ges- 
ture. When you and I were little boys 
and girls our mothers taught us to kneel 
down and put our hands together and shut 
our eyes and say, in a very gentle voice: 
"Our Father who art in heaven." Now 
why.^ Why were we not told to say our 
prayers when we were pulling off our 
stockings or running round the room.f^ 
Because it was perfectly well understood 
from experience, though the law of it was 
not understood, that not only is gesture 
the expression of the mind, but that it 
produces the appropriate expression upon 
the mind. That the new psychology is 
teaching. You yawn not only because 
you are sleepy, but you become sleepy 
[ 54 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

if you yawn. Now apply that, my friends, 
to dancing. How can it fail if the dance, 
which is a gesture that originated in a 
time when the animal life was predomi- 
nant, and which had no object but to 
excite the sensual passions, accompanied 
by barbaric music, is indulged in — I say 
how can it fail that the mind shall be 
affected by that thing which the gesture 
represents? You say that that is a libel 
upon much of the dancing. I do not say 
anything at all about much of the dan- 
cing. You may call it by one or another 
name, but there is a philosophy back of 
it all, and you may use your own judg- 
ment as to the moral effect of gestures 
which have the vilest origin. No doubt 
any dance may be made vulgar, but some 
dances, no matter how much they may 
be modified, will never lose their vileness. 

And one thing more. I am not going 
to give you the amusement of speaking 
to you about women's dress, but I am 
[ 55 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

going to ask you this: In your judgment 
as members of the Christian Church, is 
much of the dressing that is seen upon 
the streets, at dinner parties, at balls, 
conducive to the modesty of women, or 
to that reverence for them on the part 
of man which is the basis of true manli- 
ness? That is a thing for Christian 
women to decide. 

Now to bring it to an end, what can 
we do? Well, in the first place, we can 
do nothing about these homes that are 
already destroyed. We can do nothing 
about these men and women who have 
taken these irrevocable steps — it is too 
late: "Ye cannot enter now," and we 
must even let it alone. But I am thinking 
about these boys and girls who are going 
to be the Christian Church in a very few 
years, and I want to know what sort of 
a preparation is being given them to exer- 
cise the power to remit and to bind sins, 
if from an early day they are accustomed 
[ 56 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

to see men and women who have violated 
their marriage vows and been reunited 
to somebody else, received in your houses 
and welcomed as guests, receiving the 
approval of your judgment upon their 
misspent lives? 

I ask you : What is life to be as the re- 
sult of all this novel-reading where the 
sex appeal is played with as if it were the 
only interest in life, and this going to the 
theatre to see things that St. Paul said 
"ought not even to be named among you 
as becometh saints"? Do not allow any 
one to be deluded by the fact that in so 
doing they are helping in a great moral 
movement. They are not helping in any 
moral movement. The Greeks were wiser 
than modem Americans on this subject 
of morality. The most beautiful and the 
most profound of all the Greek myths is 
the story of the slaying of Medusa, the 
Gorgon, by Perseus. Her face, we are 
told, was at once beautiful and horrible, 
[ 57 ] 



MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 

so that he who looked upon it was turned 
to stone. The hero would not look upon 
the face of evil. He saw it only in the 
shield that had been given him by Athene! 
Only as the servant of wisdom would he 
look at evil, and when he saw it reflected 
there he slew it. Paul, it is likely, never 
heard that story, but he knew the great 
truth that underlies it when he wrote: 
"Live in the spirit and you will not fulfill 
the lusts of the flesh." 

"Whose soever sins ye remit they are 
remitted; and whose soever sins ye re- 
tain, they are retained," and you are 
thereby responsible. 



[ 58 ] 



IV 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

"Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted mito 
them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are re- 
tained."— St. John 20 : 23. 

I FELT it my duty to speak to you last 
Sunday of the closing words of this text, 
and to remind you of your responsibility 
as Christians to bind upon the consciences 
of men and women the sin of sensuality 
until the burden became so great that 
they could not bear it. 

This morning I turn to the far more 
congenial task of reminding you of your 
privilege to forgive sins. *' Whose soever 
sins ye remit, Uft off, they will be Hfted 
off." What sins you and I are to forgive 
covers too large a field to be considered 
in any one sermon. I purpose then Umit- 
[ 59 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

ing the consideration to one particular 
sin which I think the time has come for 
the Christian Church to forgive. It is 
the sin of doubt. As I reminded you in 
the first sermon on this text, the sins that 
were originally remitted by the early 
Church and by the disciples in the con- 
version of the Roman Empire were, some 
of them, no sins; that is, the remission 
consisted in the revelation of the fact 
that what had been considered sin was 
not sin. Now we all know that no one 
of us can live to himself, and if the com- 
munity in which we live is convinced that 
we are doing wrong, it won't do for us to 
say, **I am independent of the opinion 
of the community," for if it did not suc- 
ceed in changing our opinion it would suc- 
ceed in depressing and discouraging us, 
and leading to that despair of God which 
is the greatest sin. In that sense we may 
call doubt a sin, because the leaders of 
the Church, the representative people in 
[ 60 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

any congregation, have agreed that they 
will say to the young, to the sceptic: 
"Unless you are prepared to accept every- 
thing that I accept, everything on which 
the Christian Church has once laid em- 
phasis, you cannot be a part of this 
Church." 

Now in order that we may not get too 
far afield, in order that we may make 
this thing possibly helpful to some one, 
let us ask ourselves what form the doubt 
takes to-day. It takes the form of doubt 
of what is called the miraculous. It is 
very widespread. Boys and girls are 
home from school to-day; perhaps you 
have had a talk with some of them, and 
perhaps they have told you the difiicul- 
ties they have begun to feel about the 
Christian religion. They are perplexed, 
they are troubled, they are sceptical of 
what is called the miraculous. It is still 
more so in college, where men have gone 
deeper into the study of nature with its 
[ 61 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

inevitable law. It is found in professional 
life where men have made a specialty of 
some scientific aspect of the universe. 
Yes, it is found even amongst the students 
of theology. Some of the younger clergy 
who have made the deepest study of the 
history of the New Testament will say 
to older men, if they feel sure of their 
sympathy: "We were taught that the 
four Gospels were the records made by 
contemporary eye-witnesses. We have 
learned that that is not true of any one 
of them." Those who speak thus may 
mean no more than that the Gospels as 
we now have them are not the work of the 
men whose names they bear. Of course 
it was only carelessness that led any one 
to speak of Mark and Luke as eye-wit- 
nesses. They belonged to the second 
generation. "We have learned," they 
continue, "another thing, which is that 
the first three Gospels are themselves 
drawn from a common source which has 
[62] 



I 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

disappeared, but which scholars say they 
can trace throughout Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke. When we look deeper into it 
we find that the earlier the source of the 
story of Jesus the less is the marvellous 
element contained in it, and the farther 
away from the time the greater is the 
miraculous element, and the result of this 
has led us to feel that we can no longer 
assent to the truth of many of the stories 
embodied in the New Testament, and 
transplanted into the creeds and formulas 
of the Church. And thus we find our- 
selves separated from father and mother, 
and from the whole long line of religious 
people from whom we have come. We 
find ourselves becoming alien to all 
ecclesiastical religious life." 

Before considering this question of the 
Bible I wish to call attention to its bear- 
ing on the teaching of the Church. No 
one can examine the Prayer-Book without 
seeing that the creeds and formularies are 
[ 63 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

steeped in the miraculous. It is therefore 
concluded that to question the miracu- 
lous unfits us for using such a book. 
That this raises a deep moral problem I 
would be the last to deny. I cannot dis- 
cuss it here. But I would not be willing 
to ignore it. This, however, may be said. 
The Prayer-Book is to be interpreted by 
the Bible. If one has come to the con- 
clusion that the Bible is not a trustworthy 
guide in the spiritual life, of course he 
cannot use the formularies of the Church 
which are largely in the words of the Bible. 
But if one is sure that in the Bible there 
is contained a revelation of the means of 
salvation but that this is independent of 
some of the miraculous events in which 
the revelation is given, surely he is not 
guilty of untruthfulness if he uses the 
formularies in the sense in which he 
understands the Bible. For example, in 
the Book of Acts we have an account of 
the marvellous awakening of the Chris- 
[ 64 1 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

tian consciousness which we call the 
"Descent of the Spirit" at Pentecost. 
The simple-hearted and devout reader 
naturally supposes that this was followed 
by the power to speak foreign languages. 
For centuries there was no other inter- 
pretation given. It may be the right in- 
terpretation. It was incorporated at the 
Reformation into the Communion Serv- 
ice for Whitsunday, where it is said that 
there was given to the Apostles "the gift 
of diverse languages." To-day I think it 
is safe to say that it would be difficult to 
find a man learned in the Scriptures who 
thinks this to be the true statement of 
what took place. It is generally believed 
that there was the same phenomenon as 
is mentioned in Corinthians, and called 
"Speaking with tongues." Are we de- 
barred from the communion on Whit- 
sunday because, in the spirit of the collect 
for that day: "O God who at this time 
didst teach the hearts of thy faithful 
[ 65 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

people by sending to them the Kght of 
thy Holy Spirit, grant us by the same 
spirit to have a right judgment in all 
things," we judge that "diverse lan- 
guages" must be used as equivalent to 
"tongues?" 

Do you suppose that I am wasting my 
energy and your time in telling you some- 
thing that is imaginary? It is the result 
of what has been said to me by boys and 
girls, and men and women who felt sure 
that they would find at least a sympa- 
thetic response. How are we to deal 
with this state of mind, which is so wide- 
spread, from boys in the schools to pro- 
fessional men in our universities? Of 
course the most drastic way would be to 
pull down the school-houses and the uni- 
versities in order that these young people 
may not learn things which, as we 
say, may unsettle their faith. But so far 
as I know in Protestantism there is no 
voice raised for that remedy. There is 
[66] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

another way, and that is to say: "This 
thing is the result of pride of intellect, and 
if these young people and old people, too, 
were submissive to the teaching of the 
Church, and would accept what the 
Church says, then all would be well." It 
may be, but as a matter of fact they do 
not accept it, and argument is worse than 
useless, because all the evidence is in and 
the jury cannot agree! 

It seems to me that the time has come 
for the Church to exercise the power of 
remission and say to these young peo- 
ple: "Doubt is no sin." Say to them 
what the greatest teacher of Church his- 
tory alive to-day, a man whose whole life 
has been devoted to the study of the 
Scripture with a thoroughness that has 
never been surpa3sed by any scientific 
investigation of the secrets of the uni- 
verse, said to the students of the Uni- 
versity of Berlin, who asked him to speak 
to them face to face not as a clergyman 
[ 67 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

but as a religious man about the deepest 
things of hfe. They flocked from all the 
"faculties," as they are called, of that 
great university — students of law, of 
medicine, of history, students of philos- 
ophy and theology, students of political 
economy — all gathered together to hear 
that man speak to them in words that 
were afterward collected and published 
under the title, "What is Christianity?"* 

Now, Harnack, in his lectures, has con- 
sidered this very question that I have 
brought before you this morning, and his 
judgment I should like to read you. In 
the first place, the keynote to the whole 
subject is given in the opening words of 
the first talk to these young men: 

"The great English philosopher, John 
Stuart Mill, has somewhere observed 
that mankind cannot be too often re- 

*"What is Christianity?" by Adolph Harnack; 
translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders. G. P. Put- 
nam's Sons, New York, 1901. 

[ 68 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

minded that there was once a man of 
the name of Socrates. That is true, but 
still more important is it to remind man- 
kind again and again that a man of the 
name of Jesus Christ once stood in their 
midst."* 

And then he comes to that question 
which he knew perplexed and troubled 
the minds and hearts of that great i^tu- 
dent body, the question of miracles, and 
this is what he says to them: 

**It is very remarkable that Jesus Him- 
self did not assign that critical impor- 
tance to His miraculous deeds which even 
the Evangelist Mark and the others all 
attributed to them. Did He not exclaim, 
in words of complaint and accusation, 
'Unless ye see signs and wonders ye will 
not believe.' He who uttered these 
words cannot have held that belief in the 
wonders which He wrought was the right 
or the only avenue to the recognition of 

p. 1. 
[ 69 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

His person and His mission. No, in all 
essential points He must have thought of 
them quite otherwise than His evangel- 
ists did, and the remarkable fact that 
those very evangelists, without appreci- 
ating its range, hand down the statement 
that 'Jesus did not many mighty works 
there because of their unbelief,' shows us 
from another and a very different side 
with what caution we must receive these 
miraculous stories and into what cate- 
gory we must put them. It follows from 
all this that we must not try to evade 
the gospel by intrenching ourselves be- 
hind the miraculous stories related by 
the evangelists. In spite of these stories, 
no, in part even in them, we are pre- 
sented with a reality which has claims 
upon our perception. Study it and do 
not let yourself be deterred because this 
or that miraculous story strikes you as 
strange or leaves you cold. If there is 
anything here that you find unintelli- 
[ 70 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

gible, put it quietly aside. Perhaps you 
will leave it there forever; perhaps the 
meaning will dawn upon you later and 
the story assume a significance of which 
you never dreamed. Once more let me 
say, do not be deterred, the question of 
miracles is of relative indifference in com- 
parison with everything else which is 
found in the gospel. It is not miracles 
that matter, the question on which every- 
thing turns is whether we are helplessly 
yoked to an inexorable necessity, or 
whether a God exists who rules and 
governs and who has power to compel 
Nature, whom we can move by prayer 
and make a part of our experience." * 

How wise is this discrimination — dis- 
crimination the first essential in any at- 
tempt to deal with these great questions. 
Phillips Brooks was once asked if he be- 
lieved in God, and answered: ''It is per- 
fectly impossible to give a categorical 

* Ibid., pp. 29-30. 
[ 71 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

answer to such a question as that." 
What did he mean when he said that he 
could not answer yes or no to such a 
simple question as that? He meant that, 
first of all, he must know what the man 
had in mind when he spoke of "God." 
If he meant an exalted man sitting on a 
throne far up above the sky, then he did 
not believe in God. But if he meant that 
life in which we live and move and have 
our being, by which we are comforted 
and upheld, to which we believe we are 
on our way, then his whole life was the 
answer to the question. So I think it 
ought to be about this question of mir- 
acles. When someone says, "I do not 
believe in the miraculous," naturally 
religious people are shocked and draw 
back because they know, or if they do 
not know they feel instinctively that the 
denial of the miraculous may mean the 
assertion of the belief that this universe 
is a closed mechanism and that whatever 
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MORAL PRIVILEGE 

appears in it, whether it be the rocks of 
the mountains or the fishes of the sea 
or the birds of the air, Hfe vegetable, 
physical, ethical, spiritual, is simply a 
product of the ceaseless grinding of this 
great machine which sometime will call 
back the product into the machine by 
which it was produced, until at last the 
whole mechanism shall disappear in the 
scattered universe. If that be the be- 
lief of any man there can be no religious 
appeal to him. He is lost — the very- 
fundamental thing without which there 
can be no religious life he does not be- 
lieve in. "He that cometh to God must 
believe that he is and that he is the re- 
warder of them that diligently seek him."* 
Now I need not tell you young men 
who are in college, I need not tell you 
older men and women who are at all 
familiar with the drift of modern philos- 
ophy in France and in Germany and in 

* Hebrews 11 : 6. 
[ 73 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

Scotland and England, that such a posi- 
tion, while it was taken by not an incon- 
siderable number of men twenty-five 
years ago, is to-day an anachronism, and 
that the whole tendency of modern phi- 
losophy is to emphasize the spiritual- 
ity of all that is seen and touched. I 
say the whole drift is away from a me- 
chanical conception of the universe to a 
spiritual interpretation of Hfe. Life is a 
miracle. It was not produced by matter 
unless matter itself be spiritual. There 
is a sense in which the denial of the 
miraculous is a denial of any true re- 
ligion. But because of that it does not 
by any means follow that when men or 
women say: "We are unable to accept 
the miraculous stories told in the four 
Gospels concerning the time and life of 
Jesus Christ," they are irreligious; on 
the contrary, most often we find that 
the whole religious aspiration of the soul 
goes forth in adoration to Jesus Christ, 
[ 74 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

but the hard facts make it impossible for 
the soul to draw near to Him. 

It seems to me the time has come for 
the Church to discriminate and to say 
that though the acceptance of those 
miracles is not essential to discipleship 
of Jesus Christ, we are not called upon 
to deride the miracles, we are not called 
upon to admit that we ourselves have 
lost all confidence in that record. All we 
are called upon to do is to lift the sin of 
doubt off the hearts of these young people 
lest the Church lose them and they lose 
the Church. 

Now I am aware that some one will 
say: "If such a position is taken the very 
foundation of our faith is removed, for 
if you once admit that there is a flaw in 
the evidence of the four Gospels where 
are you to end?" My answer to that is: 
That we who take such a position are in 
danger of putting ourselves at the stand- 
point of those who in the Church of 
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MORAL PRIVILEGE 

Corinth declared that their faith rested 
upon the personaUty of Peter or Apollos 
or Paul. To whom Paul said: "Let me 
ask you one question, did Peter or Apol- 
los or Paul die for you? Were you bap- 
tized into the name of any one of them?" 
So I ask you in regard to this question: 
Is the gospel the foundation of your faith 
or is Jesus Christ the foundation of your 
faith? Paul said: "No foundation can 
any man lay than that which is laid, 
which is Jesus Christ." . . . "The same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever." "What, 
then," it may be said, "is the value of 
the Gospels?" The value of the Gospels 
is this: they are, above all that has ever 
been written, the most perfect portrait 
of the Divine Man in whom we believe. 
But when we say they are portraits, I do 
not suppose anyone will assert that they 
are adequate portraits. Surely no one 
of the evangelists would for a moment 
declare that what he said was the final 
[ 76 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

word in the revelation of the Son of God. 
If Mark, who seems to have written 
first, had taken that position, why should 
Matthew have tried to add to the por- 
trait. If Matthew had taken it why 
should Luke try to add to the portrait, 
and if Luke had taken it why should 
John, in his old age, have drawn another 
picture to hang by the side of the pic- 
tures of Mark and Matthew and Luke? 
No one of them is adequate. 

But if no one of them be adequate, are 
we doing any disrespect to them if we 
suggest that possibly the Evangelists, in 
their efforts to reveal that Life which they 
knew they never could fully reveal, in- 
corporated here and there a story which 
they thought would throw light upon the 
meaning of that life? If they found on 
some fragment of papyrus a wonderful 
story written by some man who had spent 
a day with Jesus, or heard from another 
what his mother told him when she went 
[77] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

with the pilgrims to one of the feasts of 
Jerusalem, the last thing they would have 
thought of doing would have been to ask 
if in all its details it was *'true" in the 
modern, scientific sense of that word. All 
they cared to consider was: Is it con- 
gruous, does it illuminate, does it reveal 
the hidden life of the Son of God? If so, 
and there was room for it, it was painted 
into the picture to give either background 
or "atmosphere." So I understand the 
last words of the Gospel of John. "And 
many other signs truly did Jesus in the 
presence of his disciples, which are not 
written in this book : But these are writ- 
ten, that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God; and that be- 
lieving ye might have life through his 
name. * 

Every one of us no doubt has seen either 
the original or some good copy of Paul 
Veronese's "Marriage at Cana of Galilee," 

* John 20 : 30, 31. 
[ 78 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

where the host is dressed in gorgeous robes 
and the Nubian slave hands the lordly 
chalice, where the dogs eye the savory 
dish, and the table is spread with every- 
thing that can delight the eye or taste. 
If we are in a critical mood we may say 
to ourselves: "Is that a picture of the 
marriage at Cana of Galilee — would the 
Jew have let a dog come in to the feast? 
Were there Nubians who were slaves? 
Are not these costumes Italian Renais- 
sance? Is it not all very different from 
the simple marriage to which Jesus went?" 
But if our mood be receptive, as it ought 
to be when we stand before a work of 
art, we will say: "Yes, it is all different, 
but why did the man paint it? Why did 
he bring in everything that he thought 
would add to the glory and splendor of 
life?" Simply because he knew that 
nothing had any value in life unless the 
guest was Jesus. It is because He is 
there that all these details sink into their 
[ 79 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

proper place as attempts on the part of 
the artist to tell us what the presence of 
Jesus Christ meant to him — the simplest 
marriage feast would be transfigured into 
all the glory that an Italian of the Renais- 
sance could possibly imagine, because it 
would seem to him the natural outward 
and visible expression of the change that 
had come because of the presence of the 
Divine Guest. Then when the critical 
and the receptive mood have given place 
to reflection, we say: "This is a picture 
of Christ in the atmosphere of the six- 
teenth century." Now turn again to the 
gospels and gaze at the picture of Christ 
in the first century. The background is 
homely, the "atmosphere" is not scien- 
tific but childlike, but Jesus is the Son of 
God. 

That is the way, it seems to me, we 
should approach these wonderful stories 
of our Master's life. We need not con- 
demn them and say they are not true, 
[ 80 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

but if anyone says to me, "I cannot feel 
that I am reading now actual facts that 
took place," then I should ask that man 
to consider this question which is the 
root of the whole matter. What is the 
object of the gospel? It is to show us 
Jesus Christ. It was inevitable that the 
man who attempted this great task should 
represent Jesus in life, and in a world very 
different from the world we know. There- 
fore, let us ask ourselves not whether 
they were right in their view of the world, 
but whether they were right in their be- 
Uef in Jesus Christ. For if we can get 
that, if any one of these young people 
can be drawn to that Life all the rest will 
fall into its proper place. 

What is that Life.? It is the life of 
the Son of God, the free man in this uni- 
verse unappalled by any storm that arises 
on the sea, unshaken by any sickness, 
accident or death that comes to man. Is 
it strange that in the attempt to tell the 
[ 81 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

story of such a Life as that, so different 
from anything they had ever seen, it 
should have seemed to these men, Hving 
in the first century, that what we call 
"miracles" would be the natural expres- 
sion of such a life? It was a life at home 
with God. If you and I were at home 
with God as Jesus was, would there be 
worked in your life and mine the miracle 
of transfiguration? I do not know what 
would happen. I know that Mark tried 
to tell and failed to tell what happened 
on the Mount, but he said: "He seemed 
to talk with the great prophet and with 
the greatest lawgiver. It seemed as if he 
was talking about his death at Jerusalem 
and instead of being sad and broken his 
very face shone and his garments were 
all turned white, and a voice said: 'It is 
my Son.' " What do I care what the 
color of the garment was? What do I 
care if it was the silver mist on the 
mountain top touched by the early morn- 
[ 82 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

ing light that made the garment seem 
whiter than any fuller on earth could 
white it" — while indeed the seamless robe 
retained the same sombre hue which it 
had when Mary or the other loving women 
wove it for Jesus' use. I know that that 
is the Life in which God is well pleased. 
I know that if I could only get a little 
nearer to my God some sort of trans- 
figuration would take place even in me ! I 
know it was a Life that walked from the 
very first conscious moment, gradually 
understanding His mission to the end, 
joyful in His faith in the Cross. You and 
I talk about the necessity of faith in the 
Cross for ourselves. Think of Jesus' faith 
in the Cross ! He was convinced that the 
remedy for all the ills of the world was in 
self-sacrifice, that if He once was lifted 
up on the Cross He would draw all men 
to Him, that no one could resist the ap- 
peal of dying love. Ah, if I could have 
that faith in the Cross, if I could feel that 
[ 83 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

the object of life is not to have more 
money, not to have fame, is not to be 
comfortable, but is to draw my brothers 
and my sisters to me that I may draw 
them to God, would not that be the essen- 
tial thing, would not that be the begin- 
ning of a new social order, where rich and 
poor, wise and foolish might live together 
in peace, and the will of God be done? 

It is the story of a Life that walked 
every day in the assurance of eternal life. 
If now I cannot find the thread that leads 
me through the labyrinth that is de- 
scribed by Mark and Matthew and Luke 
and John in the resurrection morning, if 
I cannot follow it all out, what difference 
does it make if the assurance of eternal 
life through Him has come to me? I 
know that my Redeemer is alive and that 
I shall see God. 

These are the things we ought to tell, 
these are the things we ought to ask the 
young to feel and try to incorporate in 
[ 84 ] 



MORAL PRIVILEGE 

life. I believe there would be a great 
response if the Church were wise enough 
and strong enough and holy enough to 
remit the sin of doubt, that we might 
have faith in Jesus Christ. If Paul were 
living to-day I believe he would write, in 
the spirit in which he wrote Romans: 
"Let not him that belie veth not in mir- 
acles despise him that believeth in them: 
and let not him that believeth in miracles 
judge him that believeth not in them for 
God hath received him." * 

* See Romans 14 : 3. 



[ 85 ] 



i 



V 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

"Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.** 

—II Cor. 9 : 15. 

It is of God's Christmas gift that we 
would think this Christmas morning. 
"Unspeakable" means that which we 
cannot fully explain. I think that all 
the Christmas gifts that are flooding the 
world to-day are the manifestation of the 
greatest law of life, which is that the 
spiritual must be manifested in the 
material; that the inward and spiritual 
grace must show itself in an outward and 
visible sign; that God must be seen in 
human flesh. For that is what it all 
means. Many do not understand the un- 
speakable gift, but we are not content to 
love our friends, we want to give some 
[ 87 1 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

outward and visible sign of that love 
— we want to send our love in some- 
thing that can be seen and touched. So 
God wanted to send His love to you and 
me to see and touch and hear. So I in- 
terpret all this Christmas season as the 
unconscious manifestation of the great 
spiritual law of life. 

It was seen in the joy of the children 
last Sunday afternoon who gathered about 
the Christmas tree and sang their hymns 
of praise to the Babe that was born of 
Mary. It was seen on Tuesday in the 
little children in the Kindergarten in the 
Parish House, many of them of Jewish 
faith, singing with joy because of the glory 
of Christmas. It is seen down on Ellis 
Island among the little children of the 
immigrants, to whom our children sent 
their gifts to be placed on the Christmas 
tree, that these little ones might have as 
their first taste of the Promised Land the 
joy of the Christmas season. Yes, it was 
[ 88 ] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

in the heart of that kind Jewish friend of 
ours who gave a dinner at the Parish 
House that others might feel with him 
the joy that he could not understand of 
the Christmas season. You see it in the 
steps and faces of the people you pass on 
the streets, like that man whom I saw on 
Broadway who suddenly broke into a 
dancing step, and, catching my eye, 
turned very red and said: "I can't help 
it. When I see the holly I've got to 
skip!" That is the feeling all over the 
world to-day, because we are subject to 
the great spiritual law that the love un- 
seen must be manifested in some gift. 

But you and I have come together as 
Christian people, presently, I hope, all of 
us, to partake of the Lord's Supper — 
God's great Christmas feast, and so we 
want to take one moment of our service 
and try to make plain to ourselves some- 
thing of what the unspeakable gift means. 
We cannot tell all of it, but I think we 
[89] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

can tell to one another more than the 
children know, and more than those who 
do not know Jesus can know. 

First of all, then, it is the gift of peace 
on earth. God sends the Prince of Peace 
to be the leader of humanity, in order 
that war may cease and peace may reign, 
in order that hatred may be killed and 
love may flourish, in order that men may 
seek no longer to conquer but to save one 
another. Now I know what some of you 
will say: "How can we talk of God's 
gift of peace to the world when after two 
thousand years of the reign of Christ the 
world is what it is to-day — southeastern 
Europe lying in a deathlike swoon be- 
cause its very blood has been drained by 
war. All Europe an armed camp, the 
newspapers of France and Germany and 
Italy and England calling on this coun- 
try to invade Mexico, to put down the 
bandit war. How can you say that God 
has given peace to the world when things 
[ 90 ] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

are as they are?" Well, my friends, I do 
not say that we have accepted God's gift, 
I only say He has offered it, and this I 
say, that the horror that we have to-day 
of war is the proof that we feel how un- 
natural it is, how inhuman it is, how far 
from the will of God. That is something 
to have gained. If peace does not at the 
moment reign, shall we lose heart .^^ Not 
at all, we are like men and women sailing 
across the sea; they have been in the 
midst of a great storm and the winds have 
howled and their hearts have failed them 
for fear, and one who knows the signs of 
the times says: '*The storm has passed." 
And yet there are the great billows still 
rising up, yes, but there has been to him 
who can read the signs of the times the 
vision of the day that is on its way. The 
storm has really passed, the day of peace 
is coming. So the pious heart echoes the 
saying of the Psalmist, for: "Though 
the stormy wind ariseth which hfteth up 
[91] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

the waves thereof, yet he maketh the storm 
to cease so that the waves thereof are 
still." Yes, the vision is the thing. For 
what is a vision but seeing afar off the will 
of God — the will of God which He ful- 
fiUeth as surely as the sinking sun must 
rise? How long ago all that was seen by 
the great seer whose words I will read 
you! "Daniel spake and said, I saw in 
my vision by night . . . and I beheld 
even till the beast was slain. ... As con- 
cerning the rest of the beasts, they had 
their dominion taken away : yet their lives 
were prolonged for a season and time . . . 
and, behold one hke the Son of man. . . . 
And there was given him dominion, and 
glory, and a kingdom . . . his dominion 
is an everlasting dominion, which shall 
not pass away, and his kingdom that 
which shall not be destroyed."* The life 
of this fierce beast has been prolonged, but 
the Human Spirit shall at last prevail. 

* Daniel 7. 
[92] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

God's great Christmas gift is peace to 
the earth, and when the world will re- 
ceive it then peace shall abide. Here 
may I turn aside for a moment and say 
a word concerning peace in this land of 
ours? If we could put aside our party 
prejudices, and like those statesmen, Mr. 
Taft and Mr. Choate, rise from party 
platform into an atmosphere of patri- 
otism, we should give thanks to God 
to-day that the President of the United 
States has not invaded Mexico. Had 
there been in the White House a weak 
man, long before this he would have been 
pushed across the Rio Grande, and had 
there been in the White House an impul- 
sive man, long ago he would have let 
loose the dogs of war. Whether the 
poUcy of the President, so different from 
that to which the world is accustomed, 
can succeed, I do not know; but even if 
it should fail in the end, it is something 
that we have a Christmas undisturbed 
[ 93 ] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

by the shouts of war; for had it not been 
that that man loved peace some of you 
would see the Christmas that you saw in 
the early '60's, when every gift was dyed 
in blood. 

And now, for we may not take long 
in our Christmas meditation, turn from 
the country to ourselves. What is God's 
Christmas gift to you and me.^^ How can 
it be better described than in the words 
of Mary's hymn, the Magnificat : "He 
that is mighty hath magnified me." The 
mighty God has given you and me some- 
thing of His dignity, something of His 
power, something of His glory. God has 
come into human life and every one, as 
Paul says, in whose heart Christ has been 
born, may sing with Mary: "He that is 
mighty hath magnified me." My poor, 
insignificant life has something of the 
glory of God. That is God's gift to you. 
That is what He is telling you through all 
this Christmas story — that He is dwelling 
[ 94 ] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

in you, that you are the sons and daugh- 
ters of the hving God. 

Holy is His name. The best gift is not 
the power of God, it is not the glory of 
God, it is something of the goodness of 
God. If you have been in this past year, 
my poor brother, intemperate, now He 
will magnify you into self-control. If you 
have been mean. He will magnify you into 
generosity. If you have been untruthful, 
He will magnify you into great courage. 
If you have been forgetful, dull and 
stupid in the midst of the glory of life. 
He will magnify you so that you will be 
strong and helpful and wise and good. 
There is nothing you can want that God 
does not want to give you. 

Holy is His name. He may not give 
you health, He may not give you long 
life. He may not give you fame, but He 
will give you goodness. He will give you 
goodness and all the rest is as nothing. 
He that does the will of God abides for- 
[ 95 ] 



GOD'S CHRISTMAS GIFT 

ever. God's Christmas gift is the digni- 
fying of human Ufe, and the opening 
through the humble pathway of duty a 
glory that it is beyond our power to 
conceive. 

Thanks be unto God for His unspeak- 
able gift. 



[06] 



VI 



EXPECTATION 

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day 
nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.'* 

—St. Matthew 25 : 13. 

"When the Son of man cometh,*' — 
that was an expression familiar to the 
Jews, and it meant the end of an era, 
when all the familiar things should pass 
away; when the sun and the moon and 
the stars and the earth should be gone, — 
then the Son of man would come. They 
interpreted it as the last great event 
in the history of God's dealing with the 
world. But you and I find it a little 
difficult to sympathize with their point 
of view, for living in the twentieth cen- 
tury we are convinced that the sun and 
the moon and the stars and the earth are 
[97] 



EXPECTATION 

destined to remain for unimaginable ages, 
therefore we do not quite understand the 
force of the expression, "the Son of man 
will come." 

I think that something has taken place 
in our religious life analogous to that 
which has taken place in our study of 
the earth itself. There was a time when 
in the teaching of geology emphasis was 
laid upon the cataclysms that had shaken 
the solid earth, but to-day that has given 
place to the thought of the slow evolution 
of the different strata of which the earth 
is composed. Something of the same 
sort has come in our religious thought. 
We have come to think of the coming of 
the Son of man not as a sudden cataclysm 
but as a slow process — the diffusion of 
that spirit of Divine Humanity which 
was revealed in Jesus Christ. And we 
think that we have a justification for that 
thought in the Gospels themselves, for 
while undoubtedly Matthew and Mark 
[98] 



EXPECTATION 

and Luke, what we call the Synoptic 
Gospels, are filled with the thought of 
the final cataclysm, all that has disap- 
peared in the Gospel of John, and there 
we have the thought of the coming of 
the Spirit of God instead of the sudden 
descent of the Son of man through the 
clouds of heaven. And yet, in our 
thought of nature we cannot altogether 
banish the thought of cataclysms. They 
are continually recurring, hurricanes and 
tidal- waves and earthquakes and vol- 
canic eruptions, these things occur again 
and again. In the same way individual 
life is full of accident and it is when we 
think of these great catastrophes of na- 
ture, and when we think of the accidents 
that are continually befalling individual 
men and women, that we are able to put 
ourselves back as it were into the first 
century and understand something of the 
thought in the hearts of the men and 
women who heard Jesus Christ say: 
[ 99 ] 



EXPECTATION 

"Watch, for ye know not when the Son 
of man cometh." 

These words are at once a warning 
and an inspiration. I do not think the 
preacher need dwell much upon the 
warning. I think that work is being 
done by the daily newspapers. Every 
day we can read of these accidents which 
for the individual mean the passing away 
of the sun and the moon and the stars 
and the solid earth. For him they may 
be blotted out in a moment, in the twin- 
kling of an eye. The poor strikers at Calu- 
met, — whatever you may think of their 
agitation, whether you think it was right 
or wrong has nothing to do with it — they 
gathered together to forget their grief 
and poverty and their rage! to enjoy with 
their children a Christmas tree, and in a 
moment hundreds of them were trampled 
to death in a wild and senseless panic. 
A man and his wife cross this great avenue 
to dine with friends. When they stood 
[ 100 ] 



EXPECTATION 

on the eastern side of it they had no more 
doubt than you and I, who are sitting 
here, that years of happiness were be- 
fore them, yet before they reached the 
western side they had been cut down by 
an automobile, and in a moment both 
were dead. The sun and the moon and 
the stars and the earth for them were no 
more. The boy came home from school 
a week ago full of health and strength 
and joy, and to-day he is dead. The 
young fireman goes home to sleep after 
hours of fearful toil and in the night the 
house is burned and he with it. The girl 
goes to her first ball, and in the joy and 
excitement of that great experience falls 
dead among the dancers. Watch, for 
ye know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of man cometh." 

I think it is well for us from time to 
time to think of these things, though I 
do not think it is well for us to dwell un- 
duly upon them. I think it is well, 
[ 101 ] 



EXPECTATION 

from time to time, and especially at such 
a time as this, when we come to one of 
the milestones on the journey of life, 
passing from one year to another, — - 
though it be an imaginary line in time, it 
is a real spiritual experience, — it is well 
for us to remember the shortness and 
uncertainty of human life, that we may 
watch, that we may be alert to a sense 
of duty, that we may ask ourselves 
whether to-day we ought not to take 
that talent out of the napkin in which it 
has been so long hid and which from 
time to time it may be we have thought 
we would take out and invest for God. 
We ought to ask ourselves when we are 
going to forgive our enemy. We ought 
to ask ourselves when we are going to 
begin that generous life which sometimes 
in a great emotion we have desired and 
then have hardened our hearts against. 
We ought to ask ourselves when we are 
going to leave the sin that doth so easily 
[ 102 ] 



EXPECTATION 

beset us and begin the life of temper- 
ance and purity and truth. We know 
not when the Son of man comes, and when 
He comes you and I are to give an ac- 
count. 

Now, I say, it is well from time to 
time to pause and think of these certain 
facts of life, lest we grow fooUsh and lose 
all sense of the seriousness and dignity 
of life. But the familiar adage, "All 
work and no play makes Jack a dull 
boy," has its significance in the religious 
life. If we think of nothing but duty, 
then our Hfe will tend to grow like that 
of the Pharisee, until at last we come to 
the point where we congratulate God that 
He has got some one who will do His 
work as well as we do ! Until we come to 
think that God owes us something for 
what we have done for Him ! Or Uke the 
boy in the hot schoolroom, who hears 
the quail whistle in the stubble and longs 
to be out in the freedom of the world, we 
[ 103 1 



EXPECTATION 

grow weary of well-doing. Duty is the 
foundation and the background of hfe, 
but we must rise above the foundation 
and we must come out of the background 
into the foreground and that is why I 
say these words of our Master are not 
simply a warning — they are also an in- 
spiration to a life of joy and power. 

Now, the joy of life lies largely in 
expectation, that is, in the confidence 
that things will happen that will be de- 
lightful. The boy or girl gets out of bed 
on the morning of a holiday filled with a 
great expectation and that expectation 
colors all the day and changes the very 
events as they come to pass. No doubt 
some one will say that is incident to 
youth and it is not to be expected that 
men and women, who have had some ex- 
perience of the hardness of life, shall be 
able to look forward with a joyful antici- 
pation to the future. I have no doubt, 
I know, in some cases that is true. 
[ 104 ] 



EXPECTATION 

There are men and women whose Kves 
have been very hard. But has it been 
so with most of us here this morning — 
with you and me? We have had our 
sorrows and our failures and our disap- 
pointments and our trials, but has life, 
on the whole, been such a dreary and un- 
profitable thing that we do not care to 
prolong it? Not at all, yet we are all in 
danger of falling into the habit of think- 
ing of the hardships and the failures that 
are behind us instead of being alert to the 
joys and the beauties that are before us. 

Let me illustrate this by a simple 
story. A man was walking not long ago 
through the pine woods and his mind was 
dull and his thoughts were sombre. He 
was going over the past — how much he 
had lost, how little he had gained, until 
he was in danger, at the next step, of 
slipping into the slimy bog of self-pity, 
when suddenly a turn in the path through 
the woods brought him face to face with 
[ 105 ] 



EXPECTATION 

a vision of beauty. On an old pine-tree 
was hung a garland — a perfect circle of 
gold and brown and crimson. If this 
man had been a Greek peasant living two 
thousand years ago he would have re- 
turned and said that he had seen the 
coronet of a dryad in the wood. If he 
had been a Hebrew prophet he would 
have said that in his hour of despondency 
God sent His angel and hung the crown 
of glory right in his path. But, being a 
man in the twentieth century, after the 
first feeling of awe and joy had passed, 
curiosity arose and he went to see what 
this thing was; and it was simple enough. 
A little vine not larger than my thumb, 
had grown up the bole of the tree and 
caught by some inequality in the bark 
had been turned and then caught again 
so that it made a perfect circle and the 
glory of the leaves in the autumn frost 
had made it a thing of beauty, and its 
memory a joy forever. It was not a 
[ 106 ] 



EXPECTATION 

dryad, it was not an angel, it was the 
spirit of Universal Life, in one moment 
become visible. If you and I would 
walk through the woods that are before 
us expecting God's revelation of good- 
ness and strength, this would be a differ- 
ent year for every one of us. 

"Watch — be on the lookout — for ye 
know not when the Son of man will 
come," not to destroy but to bless. Why 
should it not be so? To some of you in 
this coming year will come a new and 
beautiful life. Some woman will press a 
babe to her breast, some man will have 
opened before him larger opportunities for 
showing what sort of man he is. Some of 
us, I hope, will come to change our sense 
of value and think that goodness is the best 
thing in the world. Some of you will 
know something of what it means to be 
near to God. The Son of man, the Di- 
vine Spirit in human life, will come to 
you. 

[ 107 ] 



EXPECTATION 

And now we come back to the way in 
which we began. Some one will say: 
'*Yes, but when all this has been said 
you are balancing untoward against joy- 
ful events and at the end there is to be 
one event to us all, every one of us is 
going to die!" Yes, but we are not 
talking about events; the thing that 
gives hfe value is not an event, it is 
personality. The coming of the Son of 
man is the coming of God to your life 
and mine, in a way that we can see and 
touch and in some measure understand. 
That is the final meaning of hfe. Of 
course to every one of us the final event 
should be the supreme experience in 
which the Son of man draws near to the 
individual soul. We have forgotten the 
word of the sombre but wise preacher: 
''There is a time to be born, and there is 
a time to die." Untimely birth, whether 
it be too soon or too late, is a tragedy 
the effects of which are often seen all 
[ 108 1 



EXPECTATION 

through hfe; and untimely death we 
speak of when it comes to the young; 
but how seldom do we think of the death 
unduly delayed as untimely! Suppose 
this year is the time for you or me to 
die, would it be a calamity? Our times 
are in God's hands and while we all have 
asked again and again that we might not 
die, while again and again we have es- 
caped on the sick-bed, on the field of 
sport, in perils on the sea and in perils of 
the land, now perhaps this year it is 
best that we should escape no more. 
Suppose your work is done and to put the 
brush once more on the picture is to ruin 
it, or to drive the chisel once more into 
the statue is to crack it, would it not be 
well that a wise and loving hand should 
draw you away when your work is done? 
Suppose your long continuance means a 
burden upon those you love, would it be 
a calamity if this year that burden were 
lifted from them? Suppose your soul 
[ 109 1 



EXPECTATION 

has reached the receptive stage when 
the revelation of the new hfe can best 
come to you, will you then ask that it 
may not come, that the Son of man, the 
Friend that from time to time you have 
seen, the Master who f alteringly you have 
served, will not give you the great gift? 
If it should be to you such an experience 
as came to those men on the Resurrec- 
tion Day, when walking to Emmaus 
they communed with their Friend and 
He revealed to them the mystery of the 
past life — would it be a calamity if the 
great mystery should be made known? 
If it should come to you and me this 
year that like Peter we saw the Divine 
Life on the shore and cried, '*It is the 
Lord," and cast ourselves into the sea, 
if there He met us with forgiveness and 
the revelation of new usefulness in the 
eternal life, would it be a calamity? 

There is a time to be born and there 
is a time to die." 

[ 110] 



EXPECTATION 

What shall be our conclusion of the 
whole matter? I do not know how better 
to express the serious yet hopeful spirit 
with which we ought to enter again into 
a new year than in the sublime prayer 
of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, put into the 
Visitation of the Sick in our Book of 
Common Prayer, though it had no place 
in the English Book. God, whose 

days are without end, and whose mercies 
cannot be numbered; make us, we be- 
seech thee, deeply sensible of the short- 
ness and uncertainty of human life, and 
let thy Holy Spirit lead us in holiness 
and righteousness, all the days of our 
lives; that, when we shall have served 
thee in our generation, we may be gath- 
ered unto our fathers, having the testi- 
mony of a good conscience; in the com- 
munion of the Catholic Church; in the 
confidence of a certain faith; in the com- 
fort of a reasonable, religious and holy 
hope; in favor with thee, our God, and 
[ 111 ] 



^1 

EXPECTATION 

in perfect charity with the world. All 
this we ask through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen.*' 



/ 



[ 112] 



VII 



THE INN 

"He brought him to an inn." — St. Luke 10 : 34. 

This is a line in a story which every 
Christian and many who do not call them- 
selves Christians know by heart — the 
story of the Good Samaritan. In it Jesus 
answers the question of the lawyer: "Who 
is my neighbor.^ " The lawyer had a long 
history back of him. He knew there was 
an obligation inherent in human nature 
to help your neighbor. The man who 
falls by your side you must lift up. The 
brother that is wounded you must tend 
or revenge. The member of the tribe or 
the clan, all who belong to the same na- 
tion, all who worship God in a certain way 
have a claim upon you. The human 
claim because they are nigh and there- 
[ 113 ] 



THE INN 

fore they must be helped. But it was 
evident that Jesus had something differ- 
ent in mind when he quoted: *'Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," and the 
lawyer said, not for one moment denying 
the principle but seeking for the applica- 
tion: "Yes, but who is my neighbor?" 
Jesus' answer, in the fewest words, is this: 
"The man who needs you is your neigh- 
bor." And we might say that the prog- 
ress of the social life of mankind can be 
measured by the radius that extends from 
the heart of a man to the circumference 
of his beneficence. How large is your 
life? That radius will give you your 
stature. How large is the Church or the 
State or the Christian world? Measure 
it by that line. Year by year the line 
lengthens and the great circle of Chris- 
tian beneficence is enlarged. 

This was the characteristic of the Chris- 
tian Church at the beginning. They 
went forth repeating the old words of 
[ 114 ] 



THE INN 

Proverbs with a new meaning: "He that 
giveth unto the poor lendeth unto the 
Lord, and look what he layeth out it shall 
be paid him again." Yes, and those 
other words of which we have no record 
in the Gospel, which have been saved to 
us, as it were by chance, the words of the 
Lord Jesus: "It is more blessed to give 
than to receive." That was the spirit 
and the test of true membership in the 
Christian Church — the helping of every 
life that needed help, claiming it, whether 
it were Jew or Gentile, barbarian or 
Scythian, bond or free, as neighbor to the 
man who was the brother of Jesus Christ. 

That also was the predominating 
thought all through the Middle Ages. I 
suppose it would be no exaggeration to 
say that no story that was ever told had 
such an influence on the practical life of 
Western Europe as this story of the Good 
Samaritan, for all over Europe the weary 
traveller found some door that opened to 
[ 115 ] 



THE INN 

him when the evening fell, — the door of 
the monastery; whether he walked across 
the deserts of Egypt or was lost in the 
snows of the high Alps — wherever man 
was in need the door was open and he 
was taken in because he was neighbor to 
Jesus Christ. 

Then when the Reformation came men 
began to ask themselves a great many 
questions, and among others whether this 
whole system of beneficence on the part 
of the Christian Church had not produced 
the disease that it undertook to cure. 
Certainly it had come to pass that in 
England, Germany, France, and Italy the 
highways were filled with sturdy beggars, 
and the monasteries were filled with lazy, 
inefiicient men, and that was one of the 
things that the Reformation immediately 
started to clean up. As a result of it 
those of you who travel from one country 
to another in Europe know that the high- 
ways to-day are filled with beggars who 
I 116 ] 



THE INN 

are the children of the recipients of the 
charity of the monastery and that in the 
Protestant countries those beggars have 
largely been driven from the road. 

Yes, but a thing that was forgotten in 
all this discussion was this: that the 
Catholic Church never undertook to cure 
poverty. It accepted the words of our 
Saviour as if they were the expression of 
God's eternal will: "The poor ye have 
always with you, and whensoever ye will 
ye may do them good." They accepted 
that as the normal condition of human 
society, and did what they could to re- 
lieve the present poverty that was at 
their door. 

Now there has come an entirely new 
conception of the meaning of human life, 
and the State has taken over this problem 
of poverty and is attempting to deal with 
it in a scientific, that is, in an intelligent 
way. For there has arisen of late, very 
late, a new vision of human society in 
[ 117 ] 



THE INN 

which degrading poverty shall be abol- 
ished. I do not see how any man or 
t woman who calls himself a Christian can 

fail to thrill at the thought of such a so- 
ciety as that — degrading poverty ban- 
ished — no httle child's flesh and bones 
ground up in the machinery of a mill ! No 
young girl just blossoming into woman- 
hood sweated until the blood comes out 
of her pores! No young man crushed 
and beaten down by a greater power when 
he is trying to lift himself a little in the 
, world. All the foul tenements done away 

with, and something approaching eco- 
nomic equality reigning in democracy! 
^ For it is felt now, as never before, that a 

democracy that has accomplished some- 
thing of legal and political equality must 
take another step toward the approxima- 
tion to economic equality. 

This great vision and the hope that 
has come with it is attracting the noble- 
hearted youth in every country of West- 
[ 118 ] 



THE INN 

era Europe and in these United States 
under the general head of Sociahsm. 

Now if by Sociahsm is meant what the 
word hterally means, brotherhood, then 
every Christian man and woman must 
be a Sociahst; he cannot be indifferent 
to this hope for the abohtion of degrad- 
ing poverty. But it does not rest in a 
great hope, it is organizing itself into 
different companies to accomplish the de- 
sired end by certain specific means. For 
instance, the Single Tax that will divert 
the unearned increment into the treasury 
of the state, a system of taxation that 
will bear heavily upon the very rich and 
allow those of moderate means almost 
entirely to escape! Or the taking over 
of all industries by the central gov- 
ernment and distributing the product 
amongst the people fro rata. Do you 
not see, then, the difficulty in which the 
minister finds himself when he is asked 
to turn from a great and noble vision to 
[ 119 1 



THE INN 

express an opinion upon political plans 
for the accomplishment of that vision? 
If he does not express his approval and 
call himself a Socialist in the narrow 
sense in which the word is being used 
now, then he may expect to be denounced 
by certain bishops, by not a few of his 
brethren, and above all by the news- 
papers, who will accuse him of flattering 
the rich, because he cannot give his un- 
qualified approval to these schemes, be- 
lieving that any one of them would 
make the disease ultimately infinitely 
greater than it is to-day. But I am not 
to be deflected from my purpose by any 
such fear as that when I say that the 
Christian Church has a definite work to 
do in this matter which is quite inde- 
pendent of the political schemes that are 
on foot for its accomplishment. And 
here let me say, before I leave it, that we 
might well learn a lesson from the his- 
tory of our country. 

[ 120 ] 



THE INN 

There was a great vision fifty years 
ago of the aboUtion of human slavery, 
and there were good and wise men — they 
were better than they were wise — men 
with burning hearts, such, for instance, 
as Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner 
and Thaddeus Stevens and Horace 
Greeley — every one of those men felt that 
immediate emancipation was the only 
solution of the problem that beset us. 
But the wisest man in the nineteenth 
century was Abraham Lincoln, and he 
knew that the most important thing for 
slave as well as owner was that the Union 
should be preserved: "Preserve the 
Union, the nation and its great ideal, and 
slavery is bound to wither away." So I 
say about this movement for the aboli- 
tion of degrading poverty. I love it, I 
would do the little I can to bring it to pass, 
but I know that if we do not guard the 
national prosperity degrading poverty will 
not merely continue, but it will spread. 
[ 121 ] 



THE INN 

There has been built up in this land 
since the close of the Civil War such 
prosperity as the world had never seen. 
How has it been done? Some man tells 
me it has been done by fraud, and I do 
not doubt that there have been great 
fortunes the foundations of which were 
laid in fraud. Another says that it 
has been done by the crushing of the 
weak competitor. I know of individual 
cases where that has been done, result- 
ing in great prosperity for the oppressor. 
Yes, but when we drop our voices and 
quiet down a little, is there any sane 
man or woman who believes that this is 
a full explanation of the prosperity with 
which this land has been blessed for the 
last fifty years We know that these 
things are the exceptions and that while 
they are very dreadful and ought to be 
dealt with by the firm hand of govern- 
ment, nevertheless we know that we are 
not a nation of thieves or thugs or frauds. 
[ 122 ] 



THE INN 

It has been the energy, the intelhgenee, 
the solemn consecration day after day to 
duty, co-operating with the unexampled 
gifts of God's bounty, that have built up 
the great prosperity of these United 
States. 

Now, prosperity is a palace of crystal, 
and it can easily be destroyed. But when 
it is once destroyed it cannot easily be 
built up again, and that, it seems to me, 
is what is forgotten by many warm- 
hearted men and women, by many poli- 
ticians and statesmen — that it is our 
duty to conserve the prosperity of this 
nation, while keeping in mind the splen- 
did vision of the gradual and ultimate 
abolition of degrading poverty.* 

Now let us get a little nearer to our 
text: What is the opportunity for you 
and me to do what no state has ever 

*No one, I hope, will so misunderstand this as to 
suppose I mean to identify "prosperity" with its 
antithesis "Corporate privilege. Prosperity means 
Commonwealth — that in which all share. 

[ 123 ] 



THE INN 

done, or ever can do, for the state can 
only deal with man in the mass, it can 
only make the conditions somewhat differ- 
ent. It is just as if Pontius Pilate had 
built a new macadam road from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho, and never taken one 
look at the individual man who was 
lying wounded by the wayside. What 
would the new macadam road do for 
him? Now that is what it seems to me 
the Church ought, first of all, to be con- 
sidering — not how all the conditions of 
life are to be changed, not how mankind 
is to be benefited in the mass, but what 
is to be done about the individual man 
who lies at the roadside which we are 
travelling. 

Well, there is the first diflSculty. We 
are not travelling the road where the 
needy man lies. This Good Samaritan in 
the story was journeying from Jerusalem 
to Jericho; why I do not know. Per- 
haps he was going to collect rents, per- 
[ 124 ] 



THE INN 

haps he was going to buy oil, I do not 
know what his business was. He prob- 
ably was engaged in some business that 
carried him along the road from Jerusalem 
to Jericho. 

Now one word about that. This had 
once been one of the most fashionable 
roads in the world. Jericho was the re- 
sort of rich people who built their villas 
there, as you do at Bar Harbor or New- 
port or Tuxedo, — or whatever place you 
please in our modern life. Cleopatra had 
a villa at Jericho. You may imagine the 
social thrill of people in society when they 
heard that Cleopatra was in residence! 
It was once a great fashionable resort, 
and as a result the litters and companies 
of fashionable people went up and down 
this road just as modern vehicles go up 
and down Fifth Avenue to-day. Then 
the trade routes changed, and instead of 
the great highway from Arabia being the 
important thing it was the road that led 
[ 125 ] 



THE INN 

southwest to Egypt, or northwest to 
Caesarea, or northeast to the Lake of 
GaHlee, to get into communication with 
the great Eastern world. Well, the route 
of trade had changed, and fashion had 
changed with it, and therefore this was a 
deserted road filled with bandits. 

Now something of the same sort has 
happened on this island on which we 
live. In the early days there were gar- 
dens running down to the Battery and to 
the East River and North River, and 
arbors in which people were sitting and 
conversing with their friends. It was 
the fashionable resort of the early Dutch 
society, but it is so no longer. The roads 
are now running north and south along 
this island, and the consequence is that 
from east to west the roads are largely 
deserted by those people to whom I am 
speaking this morning. You don't jour- 
ney that way, you journey north and 
south, therefore if this story of the Good 
[ 126 ] 



THE INN 

Samaritan interests you, you must make 
it your business to journey along the un- 
fashionable road, and then you will see 
what that man saw, the human life 
wounded. 

To lay aside all figures of speech, you 
would see, first of all, a little child, a little 
boy or girl, just old enough to be out on 
the street, probably filthily dirty, pas- 
sionate, untrained, undisciplined, yes and 
sometimes with the marks of brutal scars 
upon its face or little arms. That is 
what you would see. Or you would see 
a boy or girl at the critical age of twelve 
or thirteen, and there is nothing for them 
to do but to run in the streets with all 
the dangers to soul and body. And you 
would see girls of sixteen or seventeen, 
just ready to blossom into womanhood, 
but ignorant, destined to remain in the 
lower places in the great economic life of 
the city; no real education, no training, 
no great hope, lacking in refinement, imi- 
[ 127 ] 



THE INN 

tating the worst of all fashions in dress 
and gesture, a life that is wounded far 
more deeply than it knows. And you 
would see a man, a young man, tired at 
the end of the day's work. He has been 
lifting one of those great steel beams that 
it will make your back ache to see, if you 
stop for a moment when they are hfting 
them. He has been driving a team of 
horses for eight hours over these slippery 
streets — can you think of what that 
means, eight hours driving a team over 
these streets.^ He has been in the police 
force, or is a fireman, an engineer on one 
of the great locomotives. He has no- 
where to go except the saloon, and that 
is always open. These are some of the 
things that if you journeyed you would 
see, and which I am trying, without your 
journeying, to enable you with the eye 
of the imagination to see. 

What are you going to do about it.^ 
Well, I must tell you and bring it all to 
[ 128 ] 



THE INN 

an end, though I have not properly be- 
gun. What can you do? Well, natu- 
rally what this man did. He was a busy 
man, he could not stop indefinitely, he 
rendered first aid to the injured, and then 
took the man to the inn and paid his 
way, and (having had some experience, 
I suppose, in charitable work) he an- 
ticipated a deficit, and said: "If there 
is anything lacking, I will pay it when 
I come again." Large-hearted, sensible 
man, he picks up the wounded man and 
carries him to the inn. 

Well, we have an Inn — it is not so large 
as the Biltmore, but I venture to say 
that it takes more people through its doors 
in the course of a week than the Biltmore 
does. It gives those poor little children 
of whom I spoke a taste of the joy 
that is the birthright of every child. 
We give to them, the joy that comes 
from unaccustomed cleanliness; joy that 
comes from learning self-control; that 
[ 129 ] 



THE INN 

joy which comes from finding that all life, 
as in the Kindergarten, if we had ears 
to hear, is moving to harmony. We 
take those boys and those girls and give 
them what they have a right to — play — 
which the streets of this city cannot 
allow them to have. We provide for 
them to play, we teach them how to play. 
We tell the girls how to use their hands 
and be happy. We tell the boys how to 
use their bodies and be sweet and clean 
and pure. We teach them to play. 
Men and women play with them — they 
are happy as they ought to be. We teach 
those girls something, teach them to use 
the needle, we lift them from the lowest 
ranks in the economic scale, and they 
become expert stenographers and secre- 
taries, and are given places of trust — all 
because some one took them to that Inn. 
And we provide for those men, tired and 
weary at the end of the day's work, some 
place where the respectable man can meet 
I 130 ] 



THE INN 

his friends, talk and smoke, read the 
magazines, play cards and billiards, and 
go home strengthened and refreshed. 

I know that some one will say: "Why 
aren't you doing a greater religious work? " 
We are! It is the last thing we can talk 
about, but it is being done. Many of 
these people are not susceptible to direct, 
dogmatic religious education, but there is 
not one of them that is not susceptible 
to the influence of Jesus Christ the Divine 
Man. Think of the hundreds that we 
gather into the Sunday-schools (there 
were two hundred boys and girls who got 
up and went to the early Communion on 
Christmas Day). We have got those 
boys and girls welded into societies, in 
order that they may be kept in touch 
with the Church during those critical 
years that pass after Confirmation, and 
before they themselves are mothers and 
fathers, with the responsibility of the 
children lying heavy upon their souls. 
[ 131 ] 



THE INN 

Well, that is being done in your great 
Inn. 

Some people seem to think that they 
have imitated the good Samaritan when 
they have taken some one to the inn. 
They have imitated the beast on whom 
the poor wounded traveller was placed! 
You have not only to take the man to the 
Inn, but you must provide for his being 
taken care of, and for a possible deficit. 
Two pence does not seem much. It rep- 
resented the cost of a man's living for 
two days, and the promise to pay more if 
he had to stay longer than two days. If 
I were asked what represents one penny 
in the Parish House, I should say, speak- 
ing generally, that from this congregation 
we must have seventy-five dollars for 
every day that we keep the Inn open. So 
any one who wants to imitate the good 
Samaritan can give one hundred and 
fifty dollars, the equivalent of twopence. 
There are people here who can no more 
[ 132 ] 



THE INN 



give one penny, that is, seventy-five dol- 
lars, than they can give seven hundred 
and fifty dollars. There are people who 
could give seven hundred and fifty dollars, 
who could give fifteen hundred dollars and 
more, and at the end of the year not have 
had to deny themselves a single thing. 

That is our Inn. But I have not told 
you a tithe of what it is doing. In count- 
less ways it is helping the individual 
children, — boys and girls, and men and 
women to help themselves, while the 
state is discussing how best to elevate the 
mass. They are Jews, and Catholics, Prot- 
estants and Agnostics — our neighbors.* 

* Since this sermon was preached, I have heard of a 
girl — ^not depraved, but wayward and foolish — who 
was taken to the Children's Court. The Judge la- 
mented that there was no place in this city where such 
a girl could go to be out of temptation and be given a 
healthy interest in life. "The Churches," he is re- 
ported to have said, "have houses for their own people, 
but there is no Church that seems to care for a girl like 
this," and somebody in the court-room said: "Your 
Honor, St. Bartholomew's Parish House never asks 
of any child whether it be Jew or Gentile, Catholic or 
Protestant." 



[ 133 ] 



1 ^ 

THE INN 

Who is the Good Samaritan? It was 
Jesus' portrait of Himself. He let no 
' race prejudice, he let no ecclesiastical or- 

thodoxy, he let nothing stand in the way 
of helping the man who needed him be- 
cause that man was nigh to him, being 
his own brother, being the child of his 
own Father. In the Good Samaritan is 
summed up the eternal truth of the life 
of Jesus Christ in regard to the poverty 
of the world: ''Who though he was rich 
yet for our sakes became poor." 



[ 134 ] 



VIII 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

"The same day went Jesus out of the house, and 
sat by the sea side. 

**And great multitudes were gathered together unto 
him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the 
whole multitude stood on the shore. 

"And he spake many things unto them in parables, 
saying. Behold, a sower went forth to sow; 

"And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, 
and the fowls came and devoured them up: 

"Some fell upon stony places, where they had not 
much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because 
they had no deepness of earth: 

"And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and 
because they had no root they withered away. 

"And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung 
up, and choked them: 

"But other fell into good ground, and brought forth 
fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirty- 
fold. 

"Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." 

—St. Matthew 13 : 1. 

This was the subject of our study in the 
Sunday-school last Sunday, and I have 
already said to the teachers somewhat 
[ 135 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

of what I shall say to you. It seems to 
me an appropriate subject for our con- 
sideration as we draw near once more 
to the time of Confirmation. 

First of all, I will ask you to note this 
fact: The parable marks a distinct 
change in our Saviour's method of teach- 
ing. Up to this time He had spoken 
plainly, as in the Sermon on the Mount, 
but now for some reason He abandons 
that method of teaching and undertakes 
to preach by telling stories, by parables, 
by romances that have enchanted the 
world. How are we to explain this? 

Perhaps some one who has not really 
entered into the spirit of the Master will 
say: "This is an example of a genius 
finding himself, finding the true vehicle 
for the expression of the artistic tempera- 
ment; as Giotto found it in architecture, 
as Shakespeare found it in the drama, 
Jesus finds it in the parable." No doubt 
there is truth in this. He was indeed a 
[ 136 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

genius of whom we are thinking. He 
was indeed a great artist. He created 
the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, the 
Prodigal Son, the Rich Fool — creations 
that can never die. But we misunder- 
stand the Master altogether if we dwell 
unduly upon the artistic aspect of His 
nature. He was a plain, simple, moral 
teacher and spiritual inspirer above all 
else, and the purpose of His life was not to 
entertain, not to call forth aesthetic joy, 
but to bring people to God. The object 
of the change in His method must be 
found in the purpose of His life and in the 
conditions under which He was doing the 
work at the time of which we speak. 

In the first place, He was surrounded 
by enemies who were catching up every 
word that they could to report it to the 
authorities in order that He might be 
crushed by ecclesiastical censure, or, as 
it came to pass, put to death by the arm 
of the civil authorities. Therefore Jesus, 
[ 137 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

we are told here in the verses which fol- 
low and which I have not read to you, 
deliberately chose a vehicle of expression 
which would be unintelligible to many of 
the people that heard Him. The letter 
of it was plain enough, but the spiritual 
meaning could only be spiritually ap- 
prehended. Therefore it was, in the 
first place, a safeguard for Himself, 
and in the second place it was a means 
of higher education for the disciples or 
scholars. 

And, after all, boys and girls, is not 
one of the most important elements in 
education the puzzle that is given us.'^ 
It is the puzzle of the problem, not the 
answer, that is the important thing in 
your education and mine. Now every 
one of these parables was a spiritual and 
moral puzzle. Two of them, to carry out 
the figure of the teacher, Jesus Himself 
solved, like the examples that the teacher 
will do on the board before the whole 
[ 138 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

class when you enter upon a new depart- 
ment of study; so Jesus took the first 
two parables and explained them, but 
the rest of them have been left to the 
disciples ever since to puzzle over and see 
if they could find the moral. 

So I ask you this morning to think 
with me a httle while of this parable of 
the soul. The letter of it, that which ap- 
pears on the surface, is plain enough and 
certain inevitable conclusions are plain 
enough. Two things are evident. One 
is this: that the field had great diver- 
sity of soil, and the second that almost 
all the seeds that the harvestman sowed 
were lost. The first makes life inter- 
esting, the second is the tragedy of life. 
The awful waste of God's goodness is 
the tragedy of human life. 

But you and I are asking questions that 
I do not think the first disciples would 
ever have thought of asking, and one of 
them is this: "Why are these inequal- 
[ 139 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

ities in the field? Why is it that a part 
of the field, which represents a certain 
sort of character, is so hard that, like 
the path across a field, when the seed 
falls on it it cannot penetrate the soil and 
so the birds of the air pick it up at once? 
Why is it that there are to-day lives so 
hard that no spiritual impression can be 
made upon them? Why is it that in 
part of the field the ground is so shallow, 
the ledge crops up so near the surface of 
the field, that only a little soil lies over 
it, therefore when the root strikes down 
it can only penetrate a little distance, 
not far enough to get moisture, not far 
enough to take real hold, and is doomed, 
because the instant it comes up it is 
withered away by the rising sun? Why 
should it be that a good part of the field 
is already pre-empted before the seed is 
sown so that it has no chance, so thick 
are the thorns growing, with the roots 
running everywhere under ground and 
[ 140 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

the interlacing branches keeping out 
Hght and air?" It was doomed, that 
seed, even before it fell. And even when 
we come to the fruitful part of the field, 
how greatly it differs! One-third of it 
only brings forth the fruit that the sower 
had desired. Why are you and I such 
as we are? It seems to me the first thing 
we need to do is to ask ourselves what we 
are. 

Certainly every minister knows that 
there are men and women upon whom 
no spiritual impression has been made for 
years and years. We know that there 
are boys and girls upon whom apparently 
no spiritual impression can be made now. 
What is the reason? The reason is that 
their souls, the field of their hfe, has be- 
come like the path that Jesus spoke of, 
the path that is formed by the countless 
feet that have passed over it day after 
day and year after year, until it has 
changed from a field to a common high- 
[ 141 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

way where no crop can be looked for. 
How awful it is to think of lives that 
were once good soil, lives that once 
might have been a blessing to some other 
life and might have been lived to the glory 
of God, beaten down hard by careless 
habits of selfishness, of untruthfulness, 
habits of intemperance, until we can do 
no more with them! Yes, and their lives 
have been beaten hard by the wheels of 
business routine, going over them day 
after day, day after day, until at last 
that field that ought to have brought 
forth a harvest to the delight of man and 
the glory of God is dry, hard, and fruit- 
less. It is the crushing wheel of routine, 
it is the careless daily habits of life, that 
have made our hearts so hard that even 
the living God cannot touch us. 

Or, take another case. Here is soil 
that is shallow — shallow men and women. 
Was there ever a more perfect descrip- 
tion of the shallow life than we get in 
[ 142 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

the few words that Jesus speaks in this 
parable? Don't you and I know them — 
don't you and I know men and women, 
women especially in this respect, the 
whole energy of whose life seems to be 
given up to the expectation of some new 
fashion, and when it comes they receive 
it with joy? Yes, do we not know men 
who are ready to leave everything and 
take up with enthusiasm some new re- 
form that is going to change the world, 
receiving the news with joy? Yes, do 
we not know men and women who are 
taking up with new religions with great 
joy? Have we not seen boys and girls 
and men and women receive the word of 
God with great enthusiasm, and then, 
when the test comes, when the fashion 
is laughed at, when the reform becomes 
hard, when the new religion calls for the 
same self-denial that the old religion 
called for, when the word of God spells 
the Cross, wither away because they have 
[ 143 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

no root in themselves, because under- 
neath their hfe is the great ledge? Who 
put it there? That ledge goes back to 
what we call the foundation of the world. 
You and I are not responsible for it — it 
may stand for a moment as our an- 
cestors. If they were hard people then 
you and I will be shallow. It seems to 
me we can see that every day in the his- 
tory of this land. Men who have devoted 
all the energy of life to the accumulation 
of wealth until they have grown as hard 

* as the granite bowlder in a New England 

pasture; women who have grown as 
hard as iron in the great struggle for 

/ place in society, have begotten shallow 

children. There is no soil in the lives of 
those children. If that does not appear 
in the first or second generation it will 
in the third— people who are incapable of 
taking root because of a rocky ledge of 
heredity that has prevented any depth 
of soil. 

[ 144 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

Then, on the other hand, we find a 
field already pre-empted. The thorns 
are growing there before the seed is sown. 
Are we responsible for our environment 
when we come into the world? No; no 
more than we are for our heredity. It 
is a pitiful thing to see, but there are 
little children in this city to-day who, 
before they can lisp, are filled with septic 
fears, who are anxious and alarmed and 
apprehensive about the demon of mi- 
crobes. You can see the little line of 
anxiety drawn between their brows before 
they have passed out of the years of in- 
fancy. They have begun to feel the cares 
of this life. I ask some one to let me take 
their little boy or little girl and try and 
cultivate the soil of their life. They say : 
"How we should love to do it — what it 
would be for the little boy or little girl 
to have the influence of your life upon 
them (how polite they are!); but unfor- 
tunately there is a music lesson or a 
[ 145 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

dancing lesson or a French lesson; they 
must take riding lessons and there is no 
time for their souls." Well, is not that a 
thorny life? What chance has the seed 
of the husbandman in such a life as that? 
And then follows inevitably the deceit- 
fulness of riches. The rich girl at school 
will find plenty of girls to flatter her. 
The rich man's son at college will find 
many a toady to follow him, but they 
are both deceived. In the next thirty 
years it will be the boy who is working 
his way through college to-day, who has 
no flatterers, who will come to this city 
and be a leader, in medicine, at the bar, 
or in the great business ventures of this 
country. Nothing is more deceptive to 
the young in the formation of standards 
than the display of riches, and Jesus 
knew it ages ago. 

There is still the good ground. Some 
of it brings forth a hundredfold. Some 
lives are really all that God can ask — I 
[ 146 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

have known them and so have you. 
Some are not all, but it is wonderful 
what they are — I have known them and 
so have you. Some make a sort of re- 
turn, we have all known them, too. 

There are two things we may say 
about all this story. One is, not only are 
groups of men and women to be described 
as hard and stony and choked, but also 
every one of us is conscious that his own 
heart is a field in which perhaps every 
one of these soils is represented. Part 
of me is beaten hard by habit, part is 
shallow from inheritance, part of me is 
choked by environment, but a little 
part of the field, thank God, is open to 
the rain and the sunshine and the wind 
of God, and some good is to come out of 
it. 

Now, what more than that can we say? 
** Things are what they are, their conse- 
quences will be what they will be," — 
then let it go! Well, of course, if that 
[ 147 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

was what Jesus meant, then His gospel 
is the gospel of Buddha, the gospel of 
r despair. Others may say as the smallest 

boy in the Sunday-school said to me last 
Sunday, when I was speaking to the 
children about these same words in lan- 
guage more suited to their intelligence. 
I said, with happy expectation: *'And 
now, children, what are we going to do 
about it?" and the littlest boy in the 
Sunday-school said: "Nothin'." You 
laugh, yes, I laughed, too — it was so 
^ different from what I had expected. 

But we won't laugh long when we think 
how true that is of many a life, that it 
^ does not intend to do anything about it. 

We sometimes think, as we journey 
through Northern New England, that 
the saddest thing we have ever seen is 
an abandoned farm. There is something 
sadder still and that is an abandoned 
soul. 

My friends, boys and girls, yes, men 
[ 148 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

and women, the call to-day is to intensive 
farming. Do not abandon God's farm, 
your soul. Recognize the facts of life — 
say : " Good God, I am growing hard, what 
a past there is behind me, how awful are 
the difficulties of my hfe, what am I to 
do — what am I to do?'' You may 
plough up the path that is wasting the 
good pasture. You may dynamite the 
rock that prevents the depth of soil. 
You may root up at any cost the thorns 
that are choking the best growth in you. 
You may cultivate such good ground as 
you have until little by little, by the 
mercy of God, it spreads over the whole 
field. There is no such thing as a static 
spiritual field. Over our field the hard 
path is growing wider or the good ground 
is extending. 

I may not stop now to tell you how 
this thing is to be done. I know the 
difficulties, I know that there are limits 
to the blasting out of the ledge of in- 
[ 149 ] 



THE ABANDONED FARM 

heritance. But I know that the history 
of the Christian Church is not a history 
of Councils or Popes or Archbishops or 
Bishops or Priests or Monks. It is the 
history of individual men and women 
who out of weakness were made strong. 
We have just read the meaning of it in 
that first chapter of John, where those 
men, just such as you and I who are 
here to-day, because they became the 
disciples of Jesus Christ entered on the 
great work of the cultivation of the soil 
of their own souls. Two things are 
needful — the will to be better and con- 
stant inspection. Declare the first in 
Confirmation; exercise the second when 
you come to Communion. God stands 
ready to give that without which no 
spiritual harvest can ever be — the rain 
of His mercy, the sun of His glory, the 
wind of His inspiration; but even those 
things will fail unless you and I become 
laborers together with God. 

[ 150 1 



IX 



ELECTION 

"It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's 
womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in 
me, that I might preach him among the heathen." 

— Galatians 1 : 15. 

This is St. PauFs Day and we must not 
let it pass without thinking for a little 
while of one of the greatest men the 
world has ever seen. First of all he was 
a great soul, a saint, a mystic wrapped in 
the glory of God — of that aspect of his 
character we have lately thought. To- 
day I would speak of the work of the 
man and the motive that inspired him. 
He was a great ecclesiastic — some have 
gone so far as to call him rather than 
Jesus the founder of the Church. This 
he was not, but he was the great master- 
builder. 

[ 151 ] 



ELECTION 

So far as I know there are two men 
only whose influence over the destiny of 
Europe and America can for a moment 
be compared with Paul's. The first was 
Julius Caesar, who laid the foundation of 
the Empire and carried the law of Rome 
from the Tiber to the Thames. And the 
second, of course, was Napoleon Bona- 
parte, who destroyed the Holy Roman 
Empire with the dynamite of the French 
Revolution, and conquered the world 
from the Pyramids to the English Chan- 
nel, from Spain to the Steppes of Russia. 
But when we ask ourselves how these two 
supermen did their work we find that 
each had an instrument ready to his hand. 
Csesar had the well-trained Roman legion 
and Napoleon had the ragged but rugged 
army of the Revolution. Had the Lord 
said to Paul at the end of His life, as He 
did to His first disciples: *'When I sent 
you without purse and scrip and shoes, 
lacked ye anything.^" he could have an- 
[ 152 ] 



ELECTION 

swered as they did: "Nothing." How, 
then, did he do his work? He tells us, 
with that wry smile which we may see 
sometimes when we carefully read his 
letters: "I did it by the foolishness 
of preaching." A perfect miracle — by 
means that to any save Paul would have 
seemed impossible. 

Let us then take one moment to refresh 
our memory in regard to some of the 
events of this man's hfe. 

It was at the death of Stephen that I 
believe his conversion began to work. 
On the way to Damascus he met his 
Saviour, and in Damascus he submitted 
to the yoke. Then to Arabia for thought 
and contemplation, returning to Jeru- 
salem only to be received with hostile 
looks, then back to the town where he 
had been born, for years of obscure labor 
in Tarsus of Cilicia. There he was dis- 
covered by Barnabas and brought to 
Antioch where he did his great work, and 
[ 153 ] 



ELECTION 

then with Barnabas to Cyprus and Pam- 
phyHa, to Antioch in Pisidia, to Iconium, 
Derbe, Lystra — back again to Antioch 
and once more into Asia Minor, trying 
to go to Ephesus and estabUsh the work 
there and faiUng, seeking a way up by 
Bithynia to the region of the Black Sea, 
he was hindered; standing at last in 
Troas where Xerxes had seen his great 
army cross for the conquest of Greece. 
There he met a man named Luke, a 
young doctor from Greece, and that night 
he had what he called a vision, and heard 
a voice — the voice, he said, of the man of 
Macedonia, but you and I say the voice 
of Europe, the voice of America, the voice 
of the New World. 

What to you and me is the significance 
of Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon? 
What to you and me Napoleon's choice 
on the eighteenth of Brumaire.^ But that 
Paul did not return to Asia but listened 
to the voice of Europe has made all the 
[ 154 ] 



ELECTION 

difference in the world to every man and 
woman and child in this Church and in 
this land to-day. 

And here let us pause and, instead of 
asking further about the details of this 
work, seek to learn the secret of the man's 
power. He says, in writing to the Gala- 
tians: *'It pleased God to separate me 
from my mother's womb; he called me 
by his grace and revealed his Son in me, 
that I might preach him among the 
heathen." What an explanation of life is 
this: chosen of God, helped by God, in- 
spired by God, giving himself to God, is 
it any wonder that he did the work he 
did.^ But when you and I come to in- 
terpret this ancient language into terms 
of modern speech, we find ourselves some- 
what perplexed. It can all be summed 
up in one word, "Election" — this man 
had been elected by God for this pur- 
pose. But what does election mean to 
you and me to-day.^ We sometimes hear 
[ 155 ] 



ELECTION 

about the weakness of present-day Prot- 
estantism. I do not wonder, if it has 
lost all sense of the meaning of Election, 
that it cannot do the work of God. 

Now I know that some of you to whom 
I am speaking this morning were very 
familiar with this word in your youth, and 
you shrink from it now because of the 
accompanying shadow of Predestination 
that always goes with it. And I know 
that many of you young people who have 
never had any association at all with this 
thought of Election are inchned to say it 
is all outgrown. "It cannot be inter- 
preted into our common speech, it is 
alien to the enlightened scientific thought 
of the universe." It may be so, but be- 
fore we hastily come to this conclusion 
let me call your attention to something 
that I believe you will say from your own 
experience is true, and that is this: that 
just in proportion as we have lost faith 
in Election, Predestination has grown to 
[ 156 ] 



ELECTION 

be a heavy burden. Now Predestination, 
translated into modern scientific terms, 
means Heredity. We may not believe in 
Election but we are awfully oppressed by 
Heredity. Bearing that in mind let me 
read to you these strange words taken out 
of the XVnth of the XXXIX Articles of 
Rehgion: "For curious and carnal persons, 
lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have con- 
tinually before their eyes the sentence of 
God's Predestination is a most dangerous 
downfall whereby the Devil doth thrust 
them either into desperation or into 
wretchlessness of most unclean hving, no 
less perilous than desperation." What 
does all this archaic language mean? Ask 
not a theologian but a physician who is 
deahng with neurasthenia and he will tell 
you that it describes a life so oppressed by 
the past that it has no power to begin a 
new life of joy and peace. You may give 
up the old theological language of Election 
and Predestination, only to find your- 
[ 157 ] 



ELECTION 

selves burdened with the problems of 
Heredity, above which the will is not 
able to lift us. 

Now what we need to remember is 
this : that while it is perfectly true, as we 
are all saying day by day: "The sins of 
the fathers are visited upon the children 
unto the third and fourth generation" 
(that is the law of Heredity), we forget 
the corresponding law : "And show mercy 
unto thousands of generations of them 
that love me and keep my command- 
ments." There is the revelation of God's 
perpetual help to overcome the inevitable 
law of spiritual gravitation that drags us 
down. 

And now let us make this, if we may, 
a little clearer to ourselves. "It pleased 
God to separate me from my mother's 
womb, and call me by his grace." Has 
anything of that sort come to you and 
me? Well, do not try to begin at the 
beginning, but begin at the end and work 
[ 158 ] 



ELECTION 

backward and let us see what has hap- 
pened. Every one of us has been sepa- 
rated from the past hfe not merely phys- 
ically but spiritually. Some of you men 
and women who are here this morning are 
older to-day than father or mother was 
when he or she died. In other words, 
there has come to you somehow a better 
physical constitution than either your 
father or your mother had. You have 
been separated from that old physical life 
by being shown how to modify your con- 
stitutional tendency so that you have 
outlived father or mother. Almost every 
one within the sound of my voice this 
morning has had a better opportunity for 
education than came to the previous gen- 
eration. You have been separated from 
the intellectual life of the generation that 
preceded yours. Where your father had 
one dollar of income you have a hundred 
— ^you have been separated from the eco- 
nomic poverty of the past. Where your 
[ 159 ] 



ELECTION 

mother had one opportunity for social 
relaxation you have more than you can 
employ — ^you have been separated from 
the meagre social life of the past. Where 
your father and mother were hemmed in 
by the narrow bounds of their religious 
life you have come in to the liberty of the 
sons of God — you have been separated 
from the old religious life. Now these 
are not theories, they are facts — facts that 
every one of you here can prove true by 
his own experience. Now what I ask you 
is this: I have reminded you of the facts, 
tell me what is your judgment on those 
facts. What does it mean that you are 
to-day what you are, rather than what 
naturally you would have been? 

One man says: **I admit the facts, but 
all is the result of accident." Another 
man says: "I admit the facts, but I am a 
self-made man ; it is due to my indomita- 
ble will. I am what I am because I 
made myself what I am." And another 
[ 160 ] 



ELECTION 

one says: don't know anything about 
it, and I don't care to know anything 
about it, and I don't think anybody else 
knows anything about it." Let us ask 
ourselves, then, what effect these different 
judgments on life produce in character. 
Why, if I say I am what I am merely by 
accident, then you know that I shall be- 
come a foolish, careless, inefficient person, 
my life will have no more significance than 
I attribute to it. If I boast that I have 
made myself what I am, if my neighbors 
do not laugh at my handiwork, then I 
shall become proud and vulgar and mean. 
If I do not care and simply drift over the 
changes of the past without expressing 
any opinion as to the past or future, then 
I become dull and useless to mankind. 
For what happens.'^ This happens: you 
and I who thus judge of life declare our- 
selves to be the termini of the great evolu- 
tion of life — it ends with you and me, and 
all the great mystery is explained when 
[ 161 ] 



ELECTION 

men see you and me! What does that 
mean? It means you are blocking the 
way of the higher Hfe, you have become 
as the slag of the smelting furnace, the 
chaff of the harvest floor, the refuse of the 
great streets, for he and he alone becomes 
not the end but the means to higher and 
better life, greater human happiness, 
greater human enlightenment, greater 
human joy and peace who, looking back 
over life says: "It pleased God to sepa- 
rate me from my mother's womb, to call 
me by his grace and to reveal his Son in 
me." Such a man knows that if the 
modem equivalent of Predestination is 
Heredity, no less is Privilege the modem 
equivalent of Election. 

So Paul said the purpose was to: "Re- 
veal his Son in me." That is what it all 
means, that is what God wishes to do, 
that is what God has done. It was no 
vague religious expression, it was the 
simple statement of the man's deepest 
[ 162 1 



ELECTION 

conviction, that it was the will of God 
that he should in some way resemble 
Jesus Christ. God wished Jesus Christ 
to be seen in him. When he knew that 
the way was plain, it meant that he must 
give his life to preach Him among the 
heathen. For to reveal Jesus Christ is 
to reveal not a life that has received that 
it may hold, but a life that has received 
that it may give. The only man who 
is damned in the Gospel story is the 
man who in his "lifetime received good 
things*' — and kept them! 

In the Epistle to the Romans Paul 
writes to his friends: "I intend to come 
to Rome and then I will pass on to 
Spain." Spain was as far from Ephesus 
as Alaska is from New York, and farther, 
and the reason he said: will go to 
Spain," was that Spain was the utmost 
bound of the habitable world. There 
Paul must go to preach the good news 
that God had given to him, that every 
[ 163 ] 



ELECTION 

child of man is the child of the living 
God. "When I have reached you I will 
go to Spain." 

Whether he ever went to Spain or not 
we do not know. We used to be told 
that he landed at Barcelona and climbed 
the plateau of Catalonia. We used to be 
told that he landed at Marseilles and 
went over that road that some of you 
have flown over in your motors. Vienne, 
Aries, Avignon, Lyons, Paris — yes, over 
the English Channel till he came to the 
little huts that now make Canterbury, to 
the mud hovels that now make London, 
to the city in the north where Cons tan- 
tine was to be born — York. "No," the 
scholar says; "this is not history, this is 
myth." Likely that is true; but myth 
is the poetic expression of plain prose 
truth, and this is : that whether Paul ever 
saw Spain or Gaul or Britain or not, his 
spirit went to the utmost bounds of the 
habitable world. He did indeed travel 
[ 164 ] 



ELECTION 

across France and make his influence felt 
in England. He came across in the May- 
flower, he landed on the bleak New Eng- 
land shore, he touched at this Dutch 
colony, he went to the Western Reserve, 
he passed over the Alleghany Mountains, 
he crossed the Mississippi, he trekked 
over the great American desert, he came 
to the gardens of California and to the 
glaciers of Alaska. To-day he is in Japan 
and China and the Philippines, and in the 
far-off islands of the Southern Sea. *'It 
pleased God to separate me from my 
mother's womb, and call me by his grace, 
and to reveal his Son in me that I might 
preach Him among the heathen." 

To justify foreign missions is like at- 
tempting to justify the Evolution of life. 
It is inevitable, it will go on whether you 
and I co-operate or not. This impulse 
has been felt by men who had health, and 
they have built hospitals to give health 
to others; by those who had education, 
[ 165 ] 



ELECTION 

they have endowed schools and colleges; 
by women who had refinement, and they 
gave it to their downtrodden sisters. 
Those who have received Christ feel 
that they must make His glory known 
upon earth; His saving health among 
all nations. The Predestination of the 
heathen, by heredity, by sickness, igno- 
rance, brutality, and fear is being coun- 
teracted by the Election of privilege. 
"Where sin did abound grace did much 
more abound." 

Only if we co-operate can we have the 
right understanding of the significance 
of life. "It pleased God," that is, for 
reasons that I cannot understand, I have 
been separated and you have been sepa- 
rated, while all those milhons in Africa, 
in India, in China, in Japan, in the islands 
of the sea, while all those millions are 
grovelling in fear before the powers of 
this universe, or living in apathetic indif- 
ference to spiritual things, we have been 
[ 166 ] 



ELECTION 

separated into the freedom of the chil- 
dren of God. ''It pleased God,'^ that is, 
for some reason that I cannot understand, 
that I and those to whom I speak have 
been separated from the hfe of suffering 
and poverty that now afflicts thousands of 
our brothers and sisters in this very city 
in which we hve. ''It pleased God," that 
is, for some reason that I do not under- 
stand, to separate you and me and bring 
us into a life of larger enlightenment 
through education, to bring us into a 
sweeter and lovelier life of social refine- 
ment, to give us the knowledge of his Son. 

Now what is it all for.? Is it because 
I am a favorite, you are the favorites of 
God who, like a doting father, gives the 
child everything it wants without any 
regard to the influence upon its character.? 
Not at all; all this Election which you and 
I enjoy has a purpose — that in us some- 
thing of Jesus' life might appear, and 
when that does appear there can be no 
[ 167 ] 



ELECTION 

line drawn beyond which we will not go. 
We must go, for wherever there is a child 
of man there is a child of God. 

The ruin of life is to receive good things 
and keep them; the glory of life is like 
the glory of Niagara, where not one drop 
of water will be held back — where every 
drop of water adds to the beauty and 
power of the great cataract. Let the 
water be held back and the land will be 
destroyed, let it go over the fall in per- 
fect faith and it will become the glory 
and the power of the land. So may it be 
with you and me — hold back your life 
and you lose it, give your life and He 
who gave it will receive it. 



[ 168 ] 



X 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

"Greet the church that is in their house." 

— Romans 16 : 5. 

Aquila and his wife Priscilla were the 
wandering Jews of the apostoHc days. 
They had Uved in Rome till the decree 
of the Emperor Claudius banished them. 
Then they settled in Corinth, and when 
Paul came there he boarded with them- 
Later they removed to Ephesus, and it 
was in their house that the little company 
of Christians gathered. Now they have 
returned to Rome, and it is to the church 
in their house that Paul sends the greet- 
ings in our text. 

When we think of the countless churches 
in Rome to-day, of St. John Lateran and 
of St. Peter's the mother church of the 
[ 169 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

Western world, we have an illustration 
of the parable of the mustard seed. How 
small the beginning and how great tlie 
growth! But this very greatness is con- 
fusing. The very idea of the Church has 
been affected by it. The Church seems 
to consist of Popes and Cardinals, of 
Bishops and dignitaries of various sorts. 
The mayors of the palace have usurped 
the place of the king! And even in the 
less elaborate Protestant Churches the 
first significance of the Church has been 
obscured. We give the house the name 
of the family — we speak of St. Barthol- 
omew's Church and there comes to mind 
this beloved building with its stately 
fagade, its glorious doors, its golden 
chancel, its inspiring Christ in Glory.*' 
We hear the roll of the great organ, we 
listen to the uplifting anthem, we re- 
member, perhaps, some word of exhorta- 
tion or rebuke or comfort — and forget 
the Church that is in this house — the 

[ no ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

blessed company of faithful people. You 
are the Church in this house, and it is to 
you I bring to-day my greetings. 

Ten years ago to-day I became your 
Rector, "in weakness and in fear and in 
much trembUng." I came hoping for a 
useful ministry but with no expectation 
of happiness. I have had great happi- 
ness, and I hope I have done some good. 

My first word of greeting then must 
be one of sincere gratitude to my Bishop 
for unshaken support and friendship — so 
chary of advice, so willing to listen and 
to counsel. To the Wardens and Ves- 
try for co-operation in every good work, 
unmarred by self-will or slackness. To 
those good men and women who have 
carried on the various activities of 
the Parish, welcoming me when I came 
among them; uncomplaining when it 
might seem they were forgotten. To my 
brethren of the Clergy who have given 
me loyal support, to all my fellow work- 
[ 171 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

ers in the Parish, to the teachers in the 
Sunday-school, who have submitted to 
hard conditions in their zeal for the good 
work. To my friend the Choirmaster 
and to all who under his direction have 
made the music of the Church the glory 
of our services. And to the Rector's 
secretary, who has been hands and eyes 
and memory to me. Last, but not least, 
to the children who have given me their 
loving friendship. His heart would be 
hard who did not rejoice to have a little 
child — born long after he began his min- 
istry here — break away from his nurse in 
the street, and calling loudly on him by 
name (to the amusement of the passers- 
by), demand with shining eyes: "What 
do you think IVe got at home.^" and to 
the futile suggestion that it might be a 
monkey or a bunny, rapturously exclaim : 
"A baby sister!" To have a little child 
feel that such a confidence could be made 
is cause for thankfulness to any minister. 
[ 172 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

I should not be justified in telling such a 
simple tale as that and others like it 
were it not that I feel strongly and would 
have you feel the truth expressed in the 
sententious words of the old Hebrew 
Midrash: "Where there are no little ones, 
there no disciples; and where no disciples, 
there no sages; and where no sages, there 
no elders; where no elders, there no 
prophets; and where no prophets, there 
does God not cause His Shekhinah (i, e., 
His glory) to rest." 

Thus much of the past and of myself 
you will allow me to say, and more I will 
not ask, though before I leave the past 
I will recall some statistics which, if they 
have no spiritual significance, may serve 
to show something of the extent of your 
parochial activity. 

In the past ten years there have been 
1,520 baptisms, 1,254 persons confirmed, 
940 marriages, and 849 burials. For all 
purposes there has been expended the 
[ 173 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

sum of about $2,587,800. These statistics 
are given not for boasting but to obtain 
something by which to measure the pres- 
ent prosperity of the parish, not in com- 
parison with the past but with the antici- 
pated future. I might say in passing 
that I think the most significant thing in 
this large gift is that (speaking roughly) 
there has been used for the support of 
the Parish Church less than $600,000, 
while about $2,000,000 has been given 
away. 

If the Church be not the building but 
the people, the future will be dependent, 
as the past has been, upon the love of 
and the faith in and the hope for the 
institution which is the outward sign — 
the body— of spiritual life. 

Ten years from now some other man 
will stand in this place. If he finds a 
Church weaker than this is to-day he will 
seek for a reason. Some of you who are 
here will tell him this: "When the former 
[ n4 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

Rector asked us to build a Chapel, which 
among other things would serve as a 
children's Church, there was an immedi- 
ate and generous response, and the re- 
sult justified his expectation. There 
were special services for the children, the 
Sunday-school for the children of the 
congregation steadily increased in size, 
and they felt that the Church was theirs, 
and they began to love it. The organiza- 
tion of the Junior Auxiliary brought the 
children together and impressed upon 
them the privilege and duty of extending 
the Kingdom of God. The children be- 
gan to believe in the Church, and the pas- 
toral ministration to children, to a certain 
extent by the Rector, but still more by 
the Assistant Minister, made the children 
feel that the Church believed in them, 
and a hope of usefulness arose in them." 

But if your new Rector then asks: 
"Why, then, is the Parish not in the 
flourishing state it was ten years ago.^" 
[ 175 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

you will not know what to answer. I 
will try to answer for you. I will leave 
the form of ''imaginary conversation" 
with which you are perhaps too familiar, 
and deal in a plain way with some of the 
parochial problems that already exist, 
and will grow more intricate in the future. 
As I look back over the past ten years 
it almost seems as if we were living in 
another city, and these changes will not 
grow less as time goes on. 

Consider then some of the effects upon 
our Church that physical change in the 
city has produced. 

Rents have increased enormously as 
land has become valuable for business 
purposes, and with enhanced value have 
come heavier taxes. As a consequence 
great numbers of young married people 
who certainly twenty and perhaps even 
ten years ago would have begun home- 
making in the city have planted their 
homes in the surrounding counties. Here 
[ 176 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

we may rejoice that the country Church 
is coming into its own. Your sons and 
daughters are supporting and helping 
those Churches, but that means financial 
weakness for us. 

That would not be so serious if it stood 
alone, but the social revolution that has 
come in the last twenty years, and grows 
every year wider, must profoundly affect 
the usefulness of city Churches. The rise 
of Park Avenue, destined to be one of the 
most imposing streets in the world, is a 
significant sign of the times. Here we 
have an avenue of apartment houses, 
occupied but a few months in the year 
because many of the occupants have 
country houses. We may retain those 
who have association with this Church, 
but when they go we cannot expect 
people who come to town for the season 
to support two Churches. 

Then consider the hundreds of people 
living in the great hotels. Some of them 
[ 177 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

lock their door, leave the key in the office, 
and go to Egypt because there is a sudden 
cold snap! They may attend a Church 
with more or less regularity, but they do 
not feel called upon to support it. 

I ask myself, then, when death removes 
those who for years have loved this 
Church, what is to become of it? Placed 
as it is, it need never lack a congregation. 
That is shown by the crowds who gather 
here every Sunday afternoon. Very few 
of them are known to me, very few have 
any sense of responsibihty for the sup- 
port of the Church, not many have the 
means to support the Church. We are 
drawing near, then, to a time when St. 
Bartholomew's will have a glorious oppor- 
tunity to minister to people of small 
means, and will be unable to take advan- 
tage of it. No matter how attractive, 
how strong, how good the leader of the 
congregation may be, he cannot make 
this Parish what it has been to the city 
[ 178 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

and to the country unless there is pre- 
pared now an institution greater than 
any individual. What Napoleon said of 
nations is true of Churches: ''Men are 
impotent to assure the future: institu- 
tions alone fix the destinies of Nations/* 
There are three ways of meeting this 
situation, and each of them has the ap- 
proval of good and wise men. The first 
says : " We must submit to the inevitable. 
St. Bartholomew's has had a useful, and 
at times brilliant, hfe of eighty years. It 
may continue for twenty years more, not 
quite so vigorously, perhaps, but honor- 
ably, and then, when it has lived out the 
century, let it cease, and let another 
Church elsewhere do the work that it 
has done. This is sad, but it is sensi- 
ble." 

Another says: "We need not contem- 
plate dissolution. Do again what we 
have done before. Sell this Church and 
move to another part of the city, in the 
[ 179 1 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

midst of a population which can support 
it." But where? A Church in our com- 
munion is not free to sell its property and 
move where it will. It must have the 
consent of the ecclesiastical authority.* 
It will ask whither we intend to move. 
If it be found the place we choose is al- 
ready near a little Church that for years 
has been waiting for the population we 
now want, the answer may be: "The un- 
earned increment belongs to the man who 
is on the ground." If that same author- 
ity suggest that we undertake mission 
work in the Bronx, we should then face 
the same problem we have here, with the 
loss of association, prestige, and with les- 
sened opportunity. 

But even if that difficulty were over- 
come there are others. To move from 
this site means that the Parish House 
would be far from its base of supplies, 
and it would be difficult to find teachers 
* The Bishop and the Standing Committee. 
[ 180 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

and workers willing to come a long dis- 
tance. 

But there is another reason which, if it 
does not appeal to all to whom I speak, 
nevertheless must be taken into con- 
sideration. I mean the change of public 
opinion in regard to the duty of the 
Churches to the city. Every one will re- 
call the protest of the community when 
a few years ago it was decided to close 
St. John's Chapel. I know too little of 
the facts to express an opinion as to the 
expediency of that decision, but if public 
opinion was mistaken in that particular 
instance, it is certainly the conviction of 
the community that a Church to do its 
best work must minister to congregations 
that cannot support it. That has been 
the glory of the Roman Catholic Church. 
That has caused the city to rejoice in the 
determination of the Brick Church to re- 
fuse the great price its property would 
bring, and remain in the new centre of 
[ 181 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

the business world as Trinity Church and 
St. Paul's Chapel have done down-town. 
If St. Bartholomew's had been trans- 
formed from a parish to a metropolitan 
Church by me, had it been made known 
all over the land during my ministry, I 
should be embarrassed in urging the ex- 
pectation of the country that we will not 
fail in the more difficult but no less im- 
portant work that will open before it in 
the future. 

How can that be done? How can this 
Church be kept here near to the Parish 
House, at the door of the Great Terminal, 
in the midst of the great hotels, near an 
express station of the old and new sub- 
ways, at the end of the new avenue of 
apartments.^ Only by great gifts from 
those who love it and believe in the type 
of religion and churchmanship for which 
it stands. The day when a Church can 
be supported as a club, by entrance 
fees and annual dues, is passing away. If 
[ 182 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

disease is to be cured and life preserved 
there must be great hospitals independent 
of private patients. If the higher edu- 
cation is to flourish great universities 
must be endowed. We say of this man: 
He did not have to work his way through 
college, his father could pay his way." 
No one of you paid your way in college. 
The richest man's son was a charity 
scholar! All enjoyed the benefactions of 
men who have given sums great and small 
for the perpetuation of their Alma Mater. 
So it must be with the Church. 

I have felt this ever since I came here, 
but I have taken no step toward its 
accomplishment, waiting till the laity 
should express themselves. This they 
have now done. On November 7th last, 
the Vestry, without any suggestion from 
me, passed the following resolution: 

''Resolved: That in the opinion of the 
Vestry steps should be immediately taken 
to secure an endowment fund for the 
[ 183 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

benefit of St. Bartholomew's Church, and 
that the Rector be requested to appoint 
a committee of five with power to add 
to their number from outside the Vestry 
to carry this Resolution into effect." 

In compliance with that Resolution 
the Rector appointed a committee* who 
met to consider this matter, and it is at 
their request that I bring it before you 
at this time. That you may come to a 
right judgment, it is necessary that you 
should know what is needed, and how it 
is suggested the endowment should be 
raised. 

Leaving aside from our consideration 
the Clinic and Pawling, I would remind 
you that the current expenses of this 
Church, including repairs, are about $60,- 
000 a year, and that, as you know, at 
least $20,000 a year must be contributed 
by the congregation for the Parish House. 

* Mr. Henry Lewis Morris, Mr. William D. Sloane, 
Dr. E. R. L. Gould, Mr. James W. Lane, and Mr. 
Alvin W. Krech. 

I 184 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

An income of $80,000 requires an endow- 
ment of $2,000,000. Great as that is it is 
not beyond the powers of this congrega- 
tion. A part might be given by large 
and immediate gifts. A part could be 
paid in five annual payments, following 
the successful plan of Yale. A part 
could be provided by bequests to be 
paid when you are dead. 

There is a slang saying that is some- 
times used in business; when a suggestion 
is made to a man to buy or sell, he an- 
swers: "I don't see it." It has a deeper 
significance than he knows. If we saw, 
if we had a vision, we should act. 

A part of the vision is so near that 
all must see it. The completion of the 
Panama Canal will demand a port at 
this city the greatest in the world. That 
will surely come. It seems not unhkely 
that some day the whole island, from the 
Battery to Spuyten Duyvil, will be one 
great market and workshop. The rich 
[ 185 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

will be pushed away and we shall have a 
great population of working people, men 
and women, who must live near their 
work. If the Protestant Church follows 
the rich the city will be left to the Catholic 
Church and the Synagogue. If we be- 
lieved that they could minister to the 
deepest rehgious needs of the community 
we should not attempt to rival them. 
They cannot. An ever-increasing num- 
ber of Catholics and Jews are abandoning 
the religion of their childhood, and unless 
there is a Church which can be their 
friend and leader they will revert to 
heathenism. If we owe anything to the 
city, if we owe anything to this Church, 
let us do what we can to give the city 
the perpetual ministration of the Church. 
Every one will admit that the closing of 
the Parish House would be a calamity 
that Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and 
Protestants in this city would deplore. 
But not only in this city — all over the 
[ 186 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

country the loss would be felt. Yes, even 
in Europe its example has been recog- 
nized. Emile Levasseur, sometime Rec- 
tor of the University of Paris, in his Im- 
pressions of America," refers to your 
Parish House as the most notable exam- 
ple of the new impulse for the better- 
ment of mankind that the Church has 
ever shown. Some may think that the 
Parish House can continue its beneficent 
work should this Church wither away. 
No longer than the oak would last after 
the root had died — no longer than the 
body would continue when the soul had 
fled! The Spirit of Christ made that 
work possible, and the Spirit of Christ 
alone will keep it alive. If we would not 
have it become a mere Humanitarian 
Institution, if we would have it the right 
hand of the Church — the Church must 
be kept alive. 

In the years to come there will be in 
this city great hospitals, built and en- 
[ 187 ] 



THE CHURCH IN THE HOUSE 

dowed by those who, "not ignorant of 
misery, have learned to succor others." 
Great museums for Art, built and en- 
dowed by those who have been wooed 
and won by the spirit of beauty. Great 
universities endowed by men filled with 
a love of learning. Everything that can 
minister to the lust of the eye, the lust 
of the flesh, and the pride of life will be 
here. Can we be content 'Ho go hence 
and be no more seen," and leave the city 
of our love and of our pride to hear no 
more, or only as a faint whisper: ''He 
that doeth the will of God abideth for- 
ever.^" I know you too well (I know 
you better than you know yourselves!) 
to doubt your answer — you will provide 
for the Church in this house — and the 
future will be more glorious than the past. 



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